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CAXH01.1C KDUCATORS' MANUAIj ON SCHOOLS. 



THE 



JUDGES OF FAITH: 



CHRISTIAN-GODLESS SCHOOLS 



PAPAL, PASTORAL AND CONCILIAR RULINGS THE WORLD OVER, 

ESPECIALLY OF THE IIL PLENARY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, 

WITH RETROSPECTIVE ESSAYS ON THE STRUGGLE 

FOR CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 



ADDRESSED TO CATHOLIC PARENTS. 



Rk- Written Edition 
(Thirty-fifth Hundred). 

BY / 

THOMAS J. JENKINS, 

AUTHOR OF "six SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 




^^M^^ 



BALTIMORE : 

JOHN MURPHY & CO. 

1886. 



■'] 1- 



Copyright, 1886, by Thomas J. Jenkins, 
All Rights Reserved. 



Recommendations and Endorsements, 



!? Autograph Letter of His Eminence, 

John Henry Cardinal Newman. 












RECOMMENDATIONS. 




IMPRIMATUR OF THE RE-WRITTEN EDITION. 

Imprimatur. 

►J^ JAMES, 

„^ Archbishop of Baltimore. 

^^SEB^ Mayjth,i88b. 

Cardinal James Gibbons, D. D., Archbishop of Baltimore. 

Rev. Dear Sir : — Although your valuable pamphlet on education 
has come to hand while I am engaged in the Annual Clerical Retreat, 
I cannot delay to thank you, and to offer you my congratulations on the 
manner you have handled this vital question. 

Your numerous quotations are very valuable, and they render your 
brochure an excellent repertory for those who wish to supply themselves 
with ready materials for treating the subject of Christian education. 
Praying God to reward you, 

I remain yoiurs faithfully, 

►}< JAMES GIBBONS, 
August 29, 1882. Archbishop of Baltimore. 

Rev. T. J. Jenkins. 



Rt. Rev. John J. Hogan, Bishop of Kansas City and St. Joseph. 

Kansas City, Mo,, August 29, 1884. 
Rev. Dear Sir : — I forwarded your books to Father Graham, editor 
of "Catholic Tribune," who noticed them .... favorably. I had 
thought that this would aid you in disposing of some of them. 

Yours very truly, f John J. Hogan. 



Rt. Rev, Martin Marty, Vic. Ap. of Dakota Terr. 

(In commenting on " The Judges of Faith " and " Six Seasons.") 

St, Paul, September 7, 1884. 
Rev. Dear Sir : — The books you had the kindness to send me I 
perused with great pleasure It is my wish to procure the plea- 
sure your " Six Seasons " gave me to a great many people. 

Your obliged friend, f M. Marty, O. S. B. 

iv 



RECOMMENDATIONS. V 

Rt. Rev. Francis Janssens, Bishop of Natchez. 

Diocese of Natchez, -i 
Meridian, Oct. 5, 1881, / 
Dear Friend : — Your book will be a timely one; the war- 
cry against the Church in these days is the raising of the young genera- 
tion, and may our parents feel the necessity of averting the danger by 
straining every nerve to assist the Church in the great work she under- 
takes in gathering her children in Catholic schools. I will be glad 

indeed to see the book, and will pray it may do much good. Fr. M 

has written a book against Public Education; but his style is too violent, 
and does little good. Sound reason with gentleness of expression is 
very apt to convince the American mind. 

Yours devotedly in Christ, 

■f- F. Janssens, Bp. of N. 



Rt. Rev. Thomas L, Grace,^ Bishop of St. Paul (1883). 

Your book will do great good. It needs no special recommendation 
from me and I will not give it. It recommends itself sufficiently. 



Rt. Rev. M. J. O'Farrell, Bishop of Trenton. 
(Educational Pastoral, after quoting our translations and documents.) 

" We refer you also to a little work, entitled * The Judges of Faith 
vs. Godless Schools,' for a fuller development of this side of the 
question." 

Feast of St. Thomas of Aquin, 1884. 



Rt. Rev. Monsignor Thomas S. Preston, D. D., Vicar General 
of the late Most Eminent Cardinal McCloskey. 



New York, iio East 12th Street, 
Dec. 



5t 1 2th Street, ^ 
:, 10, 1884. J 



Dear Fr. Jenkins : — You are quite welcome to my endorsement. 

Your book being a compilation of unquestionable authorities must do 
much good. 

The question of Christian education is now the vital one. 

Yours in Christ, T. S. Preston. 



PREFATORY NOTES. 



The disposal of nearly the whole first edition of two thousand (2000) 
copies of this Manual on Schools, among comparatively but few of the 
Most Rev., Rt. Rev. and Rev. Clergy, and their faithful people, has 
encouraged the appearance of this re-written edition under the exalted 
auspices with which it is favored. 

Well-meant and well-taken criticisms from various sources have 
enabled the writer to bring this book nearer to his ideal of an authorita- 
tive collection of judgments on secular as opposed to religious schools. 
It is um-eservedly submitted to The Judges of the Faith, and especially 
to the supreme arbitrament — condemnation or approval — of our Most 
Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII. The testimonies recorded are all that 
could be obtained after fifteen years' waiting and watching. 

It may be worthy of remark that these pages contain the conciliar or 
single ruHngs of no less than three hundred and eighty (380) of the 
high and highest Church Dignitaries. There are brought forward 
twenty-one Plenary and Provincial Councils; six or seven Diocesan 
Synods; two Roman Pontiffs; two Sacred Congregations of some 
twenty Cardinals and Pontifical Officials ; seven single Cardinals — who 
with thirty-three Archbishops make forty Primates and Metropolitans ; 
finally nearly eighty single Bishops and Archbishops deceased or living 
in the United States. 

All documents and rulings are from the past half-century. The 
entirely new matter from the volume of the HI. Plenary Council of 
Baltimore rounds off the treatment of our dual subject — now presented 
according to the programme thus prescribed by a friend in the American 
hierarchy : 

" I beheve your little work, when toned down somewhat and recast, 
will do a great deal of good. The Bishops at the Council have dis- 
cussed the school-question at length, and are unanimous in urging the 
necessity of a Cathohc school in every parish. I trust Catholic educa- 
tion will receive a new and strong impulse ; and hence any book, that 
calmly and without bitterness, lays bare the evils of our Public School 
System, will be read with interest and profit." 

While thanking the prominent Cathohc and non-Catholic press for 
its nearly uniform kind reception of the first imperfect edition, the Com- 
piler gratefully acknowledges his obligations to the stanch staff of the 
New York Freeman's Journal, for translations of some documents 
from the Spanish and Portuguese, French and German tongues, and of 
one or the other from the Latin, originals of which could not be 
procured. 

vi 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



If the sincere gratitude felt from the inmost heart 
for the favors shown by some of the highest dignitaries 
in the EngUsh-speaking CathoHc world be not unmixed 
with a tinge of vain-glory, I trust in God and in the 
Immaculate Seat of Wisdom that the vice is not 
untempered with a due sense of my personal unwor- 
thiness of the distinction. The glory be referred to its 
proper Owner and to the goodness of my cause. 
Thanks and humble acknowledgments are due, and 
never to be sufficiently repaid, to His Eminence, 
John Henry Cardinal Newman ; His Grace, the 
Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore, Delegate Apos- 
tolic, James Gibbons, D. D., and Most Rev. Patrick 
J. Riordan, Archbishop of San Francisco, of Arch- 
iepiscopal rank ; and to the Rt. Rev. the Bishops, John 
J. HoGAN, of St. Joseph's and Kansas City, John 
Vertin, of Marquette and Sault St. Marie, Aegidius 
Junger, of Nesqually, John J. Keane, of Richmond, 
John L. Spalding, of Peoria, Francis Janssens, of 
Natchez, J. B. Brondel, Dom Robot, P. A., and Rt. 
Rev. T S. Preston, V. G. of Archdiocese of New 
York, — for autographic letters or equivalent personal 
encouragement and episcopal blessings. The compi- 
lation is deeply indebted to the courtesy of all these 
Most Rev. and Rt. Rev. Metropolitans and Bishops, 



Viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 

but one, and to Monseigneur, late Bishop of Alton, 
P. J. Baltes, for documents printed and written. 
Similar service has been rendered by Rt. Rev. A. J. 
Glorieux, Vic. Ap. of Idaho. Valuable assistance 
from numerous priests and devoted laymen especially 
in our Indian Missions is most gratefully acknowl- 
edged. 

Besides the courteous Catholic Indian Commissioner 
at Washington and four of the seven Indian Catholic 
Agents, the following members of the secular and 
regular Clergy supplied invaluable information on the 
subject of our Indian Missions: the Very Rev. Ed. 
Jacker, of Michigan; the Franciscan Fathers of Har- 
bor Springs, Mich., and Superior, Wis.; the Rev. 
Francis M. Craft, of Dakota; the Rev. Father Wil- 
liams, O. P., and Rev. Wm. Maloney, respectively of 
California and Nevada ; finally, the Rev. J. B. Boulet, 
O. M. I. of Washington Territory. 

I cannot but render thankful acknowledgments — 
though exactly how thankful they will be for its pub- 
licity one can hardly conjecture — to Messrs. Wm. 
Louis Kelly, Atty. at Law, and the senior Mr. Mar- 
koe, of St. Paul, Minn., for critical labor on the first 
edition ; as well as the heartiest expressions of grati- 
tude to Rev. John Baxter, of New Jersey, Rev. A. 
J. Harnist, Chancellor of the Diocese of Louisville, 
and my honored and venerable friend, Hon. B. J. 
Webb, LL. D., author of Centenary of Catholicity in 
Kentucky, for the vigils the revision of this re-written 
edition has cost them. 

THE COMPILER. 



The Judges of Faith: 
CHRISTIAN vs. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY DISCLAIMER MYSTIC RELATIONS OF SECRET 

SOCIETIES AND PUBLIC STATE SCHOOLS, ON THE CONTI- 
NENT AND IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD. 

To be truly Catholic one's faith must be as exclusive as 
his charity is universal. Where the former runs no risk of 
its life the latter is boundless. Catholics then must so love 
their own salvation that they shall be stubborn in their 
resistance to whatever imperils it ; and must love their 
neighbors' souls so truly that they dare incur temporary 
resentment for attempting to withdraw their brothers from 
the brink of social abysses. Though we are reputed intol- 
erant, we love our respective countries and fellow-citizens 
both well and wisely in our treatment of the question of 
education, which concerns the present and the future of 
nations. While protecting ourselves from the effects on our 
children of merely secular education, we shall surely not 
harm others nor abridge one tittle of their rights. -^^Z 

We are not alone in our belief in the axiom put forth in 
the Pastoral of our Third Plenary Council: "A one-sided 
education will develop a one-sided life, and such a life will 
surely topple over ; and so will every social system built up 



2 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

of such lives. . . . For the cry for Christian education is 
going up from all religious bodies throughout the land ; ' ' 
not only the old-fashioned Lutherans and German sects, 
but from the great Evangelical bodies — the Presbyterians 
and Methodists. '' Nor is the agitation any antagonism to 
the State ; on the contrary, it is an honest endeavor to give 
to the State better citizens by making . . . better Chris- 
tians. ' ' 

It may be candidly confessed that the State systems of 
schools in the English-speaking world, as contrasted with 
those on the Continent and in South America, were con- 
ceived in good motives, and fathered by an apparent neces- 
sity of meeting the wants of a mixed population, not of 
"one lip" in their worships.^ Nay, a system of public 
instruction in essential secular branches, for the poor of no 
particular faith may not be denied a reason of being, along- 
side the parallel cases of civilly-contracted marriage and 
public institutions of charity, for those acknowledging 
none but civil laws, or depending on municipal or county 
beneficence. 

To make our own again the words of our late grand 
senate of eighty Prelates : 

**The friends of Christian education do not condemn 
the State for not imparting religious instruction in the pub- 
lic schools as they are now organized, because they well 
know that it does not lie within the province of the State 
to teach religion. They simply follow their conscience by 
sending their children to denominational schools, where 
religion can have its rightful place and influence." 

These pages, therefore, make no pretence to dictate to 
either State or individual in their own province ; neither is 



1 This is not inconsistent with the understanding that a secret society, originally 
promoted by Mary Wollstonecraft and Frances Wright, and their English and 
American co-workers, really started the movement in the United States which 
resulted in the creation pf common schools^ as Dr, Browpson testifies, 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 3 

it expected of or designed by a Catholic, as God is our 
witness, that he should aid in any secret conspiracy for the 
bootless enterprise of suddenly overthrowing a public legal 
system, unlawful though that system be. We bring home 
to the consciences of Catholics that it is their duty to con- 
tinue deserting all mere secular schools, and building schools 
of their own, until public opinion itself undermine what 
contains the source of its own downfall, and we be relieved 
of unjust taxes. 

We would, nevertheless, benefit the world in accordance 
with their better after-thoughts, by teaching through work 
and word that it is "an evil and bitter thing to have left 
the Lord their God," in the modern organizing of society 
on the disastrous basis of the world-spirit ; for surely and not 
slowly this is drifting back to the old Grecian and Roman 
standard — two thousand years ago weighed and found 
wanting — in the thought and the law governing the civic 
machinery. 

Certain periods of the world's best education are periods 
of the world's worst morals and worst government; when 
the governed, if not strong enough for open revolt, gnash 
their teeth and spread their political heresies in helots' 
noisier agrarianisms or lay their snares in the noisome 
caverns of Secret Societies. 

Europe is convulsing in the ever-tightening folds of the 
two serpents — the one public and deadly, the other secret 
and poisonous as the asp in the fig-leaves of Cleopatra's 
'basket. They are the public State schools and the Secret 
Societies of Continental Masonry ; both which openly 
attack religion and adore the gods of the world. 

Paganism in government has engendered the brood of 
Secret-Society serpents in Europe —and not content with so 
lugubrious a triumph, has taken Christian children and 
offered them to the Moloch of State education, heedless 
alike of the polished barbarism it is preparing for nations, 



4 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

and of the thunder tones of the voice of the Mother of 
civilization, who, Hke a virgin racked but strong in her 
weakness, proclaims the outrage to the world : " Before the 
Almighty Creator, I claim these children as my own. No 
man or set of men shall destroy their souls with impunity. 
I call the Judge of the quick and the dead to witness, my 
womb has borne, my breasts have suckled them and given 
them the milk of the word, nourishing them to eternal life ; 
and behold ! you tear my own from my arms and slaughter 
them before my eyes. God of Justice ! avenge Thine own ! ' ' 

Indeed, the cause of Europe's spasmodic convulsions for 
three hundred years lies deeper than common Godless 
schools, and even Masonic associations — the latter not more 
than one hundred and fifty or two hundred years old, since 
their foundation by some tippling Englishmen in a cabaret 
of Paris. 

Four hundred years ago Europe was one great school- 
house under the tutelage of a grand Teacher and Mother, 
who, having brought forth all nations from the darkness of 
barbarism, had gathered them about her knee to teach them 
the arts of peace and the sweets of a Christian home. Far 
advanced were many of her pupil nations, and she had sent 
them forth from her nurseries instructed with Christian wis- 
dom, able to frame their own laws and found their own 
commonwealths under her more distant, but still necessary, 
superintendence. 

Near the finishing of her task in the older nations, she 
stretched out her creative hand to the setting of the sun, 
and behold, new worlds sprang forth at her touch, and new 
nations climbed her lap to receive heavenly nourishment 
from her lips and breast. 

All was peace — such peace as may be in this life of trial. 
She governed her children and counseled her royal pupils 
at the head of nations, where she had often placed them or 
sanctioned their power, until by slow degrees she could set 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 5 

them free from the trammels of tutelage, and take her ever 
multiplying children, coming to her from the ends of the 
earth, under her care and teaching. 

Suddenly one of her pupils — taught and nurtured, 
crowned with honor and anointed with the chrism of priest- 
hood — rebels, and like the first rebel, carries with him a 
goodly part of the hosts of God's kingdom on earth. Fire 
has been kindled — flames of rebellion spread, and fair por- 
tions of the kingdom are rent from the unity of that Chris- 
tian fold. Well, that principle of license has been working 
out its consequences, until we see the Old World in the 
throes that will eventually bring forth a European war, 
unless the God of battles forefend. 

In the United States, thank God ! we have even after 
two hand-to-hand contests of the ]3allot between our na- 
tional parties, apparently profound peace. We are too free 
and too well-contented with our own liberties either to give 
much countenance to immigrant! Socialists or Communists, 
or to fear yet awhile that Secret-societyism will find such 
fools or such knaves for tools as the devilish organizations 
of Europe and South America. 

''Yet awhile:" it may be only a matter of time and 
opportunity for the gathering forces of secret lawlessness to 
proceed from words to deeds. 

At least, it is the hour to sound the alarm and be alert. 

It takes, indeed, apostates from Catholicity to form com- 
plete adepts in the arts of destruction of State and Church, 
as is evident from the history of our own times. The 
English-speaking members of Secret Lodges are not as radi- 
cal or logical as their Italian, French or Belgian brethren, 
and ostensibly repudiate their infidelity and consequent 
''love of iniquity and hatred of their own souls." The 
ever greater apostasy from Christianity among the denomi- 
nations, we have too much reason to fear, will initiate the 
English and American lodges into the secrets as into the 



6 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

doctrines of ultra Masonism ; and in no very distant future 
they may attempt the accomplishment of the schemes of the 
more wicked, and achieve by foul, what they find they can- 
not bring about by outwardly fair and legal means. 

Masonic mummeries are becoming the ritual for State and 
national dedications of buildings and monuments — Masonry 
the national religion that is succeeding the crumbling rem- 
nants of the sects whose ministers bless the usurpation. 

What wonder that the Lodges foster state secular schools ? 

''The avowed enemies of Christianity in some European 
countries are banishing religion from the schools in order to 
eliminate it from among the people," teach our highest 
teachers. Let us take heed and be warned, lest their 
licensed praisers in our republic grow into more active 
abettors and push our '' only neutral " into infidel schools. 
The equal advance of God-hating European societies with 
God-eliminating systems of popular instruction, ought to en- 
force co-operation with the simultaneous, energetic action of 
our glorious Leo, smiting with one arm the audacious chiefs of 
secret revolution, while with the other he shields the cradles 
and firesides of Christian homes. 

What our forefathers in America designed as a relatively 
religious, then let slide into an unreligious school system, to 
suit the strange conditions of our State, has gradually been 
taken in hands by sharp practicers on public credulity, who 
have foisted upon republicans, as the grand creation of 
America, what, in its naked deformity, is but a cross-breed 
between the pagan schools of ancient Greece and the rank 
infidel systems of misgoverned modern Europe. 

So that, instead of our introducing a genuine invention, 
we liberty-loving, hoodwinked Americans are but imitating, 
and that basely, the exploded chimeras of Julian the Apos- 
tate, Napoleon the Hypocrite, and their lineal descendants 
in the Italian "Kingdom" and French "Republic" of 
to-day. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. J 

In fine, we are simply being made the blind dupes 
of would-be scientists, whose doctrine is precisely that 
which underlies our poor, aping system of State schools — 
that God Almighty is to be ignored ; our children — to- 
morrow, our men and women — taught religion is a home 
and church cipher ; and the United States are to be entitled 
to the ignoble distinction of being the newest thing in all 
history — a nation of Agnostics, Know-nothings of God. 
That we have not reached this sad pass, we may thank the 
same merciful God, who has deigned to spare to the saner, 
and we hope major portion of our population reverence for 
truth and faith of some form ; made many better than their 
principles and preserved the masses from the logical conse- 
quences of often inculpable errors. 



CHAPTER II. 

DEFINING OF TERMS AND OBJECT IN VIEW DIVISION OF THE 

SUBJECT AMERICAN SCHOOLS THEIR WORKING. 

Our first step made is embodied in this conclusion : As 
English-speaking Secret Societies are, compared to the sim- 
ilar but worse societies of Europe, so are our public State 
schools, compared to the similar schools engendered and 
fostered by those worse societies. Both our societies and 
State schools have gone the length of leaving out Christian- 
ity, and are unchristian and Godless, without being, in the 
worst sense, infidel. The being infidel, that is, contuma- 
ciously apostate from God and His religion, is too awful 
a characteristic of a knowing disciple of the arch-rebel to 
be applied, without positive proof, to the many innocent 
or ignorant upholders of either Secret Societies, false sects, 
oi* religionless Common Schools in America or the British 
Empire. Many are infidel, that is, unfaithful in practice, 
without being infidel in their understanding or better will. 
Many Catholics are such. But one infidelity is the parent 
of the other. No practical Christians ever become infidels. 
So creedless, neutral schools, breed creedless children ; 
indifference to God and virtue is the surest precursor to 
infidelity in practice, and this, to that blindness called 
intellectual infidelity. 

But our republic must stand on virtue, and ''eternal 
vigilance is liberty's price." We have gnawing at our 
vitals, the insidious system of miseducation that has made 
the ruin and upheavals caused by the Internationals pos- 
sible. It is a very sapping of the foundations of law 
8 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 9 

and order, having their reason of being in the supreme 
dominion of God over the minds and hearts of men, 
by creating in our PubHc Schools a world of human 
beings disinherited of their faith, strong in intellect and 
passions, weak in heart, open to the persuasive vagaries of 
every mountebank in religion or no-religion, prone to self- 
idolatry and world-renowned for license of word and deed. 

What, then, is our object in this writing? Merely to 
berate the State schools ? Devise a new system and strike 
for a pro rata of school funds ? Build Catholic, on the 
ruins of Public, schools ? By no manner of means ! We 
purpose leaving the first to non-Catholics, outside the 
denominations which seek a remedy similar to our Catholic" 
schools ; the second to specialists of State and Church, who 
will know how to bring this about without a revolution 
causing more evil than it effects good. And Catholics will 
continue building schools on their own grounds ; until, like 
the many deserted sectarian temples which are legally ac- 
quired by inpouring children of the Church, the future 
State school buildings, left empty by Catholics deserting 
them and non-Catholits becoming practically disgusted 
with the unrepublican and unchristian system, shall also be 
lawfully acquired and occupied by denominational schools. 

But we do propose, without fear or favor, to give open 
utterance to the public voice of the teaching Catholic Church, 
warning Catholics and the world of the designs and the 
results of secular State education, by presenting, first, a view 
of the system of Public Schools in the United States, mark- 
ing the influence of its Teachers, Pupils, and Text-books. 
Next, we shall present the testimonies, in order, of Bishops 
of every nation where a similar system exists, crowning 
their judgments with that of Pius IX., of venerated mem- 
ory. We continue, by detailing the decisions of many 
Bishops of the Church in the United States, and clinch 
our whole argument by the latest educational documents 



lO THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

from the Sacred Roman Congregations, and of our glori- 
ously reigning Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII., vicar of Jesus 
Christ ; concluding with the set of chapters specially de- 
voted to the details of the admirable decrees of the Third 
Plenary Council of Baltimore, which offer, in our series of 
Catholic schools, an assured antidote to the poison of secu- 
lar education. 

In short, we purpose answering this question : Save in 
special cases determined by Bishops and Confessors, may 
Catholics in conscience allow minors under their charge 
to be educated in secular Public Schools, especially where 
competent Catholic schools are, or can be, established ? 

It takes but small space to contain a miniature photograph 
of the Public-school system, and its practical working in the 
United States or in the English-speaking world. And this 
picture, in every essential feature, will represent every purely 
secular system, ignoring religious instruction, but will need 
deeper shading and sharper emphasis when we come to por- 
tray the absolutely infidel schools of parts of Europe. The 
truth obliges us to make this distinction in favor of the pro- 
fessed animus of American schools. 

The Public Schools are avowedly religionless, even God- 
less institutions in themselves, leaving out in their teaching 
the very foundation of Christianity : that there is one God 
and that he has established one true religion, in which, and 
by which alone all men are to be saved that are saved. 

The boards of trustees, the teachers, say they believe in 
God, and to prove it — though in open contradiction of the 
principle, ''no religion to be taught in the school" — they 
generally have a portion of what they call the Holy Scrip- 
tures read every morning before the children, for their edi- 
fication and instruction. But of what account is this? Of 
this Bible we will speak in the sequel. During the day, in 
all their classes and instructions, the pupils are not taught 
that there is really one true God in three Divine Persons, 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. II 

Creator of heaven and earth, the rewarder of the good and 
the punisher of the bad ; that the second Divine Person 
became man and died for our salvation on the cross. And 
still, by the candid admission of all Christians, except Uni- 
tarians, these are the simple fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity, which every one must know and believe to be a 
Christian at all. 

Take up any public Text-book of reading or the like. 
God is confined to a scrap of doggerel verses headed by a 
child's figure squatting in prayer in the lower books; and is 
more and more ignored, in the higher, until the Deity is 
dissolved into air. 

If the August Name be admitted by exception somewhat 
oftener in certain series of Reading or Historical books, it 
is only in temporary deference to the wishes of the illogical 
few who think thus to silence the appellation of " Godless " 
— such paltry trifling can satisfy consciences becoming blind 
to a creature's duty. 

Here, thumb over two hundred pages of this Report of 
United States Commissioner of Education, 1872. God's 
name is mentioned once! In that of 1882-3, you may 
weary your fingers hunting over twice two hundred pages 
for the simple name of God. Even the professed ministers 
of the Gospel overlook this solitary token of reverence. 
*'How is religion to be grafted on State" colleges, open to 
all, whatever their religious profession?" asks Dr. McCosh 
of Princeton on the Atlantic. President Gilman, of the 
University of California on the Pacific, re-echoes the doc- 
tor's answer : '' Let the State provide the secular instruction, 
and the churches provide the religious training in the homes 
in which the students reside."^. Which is tantamount to, 
" Religion, stick to your altars ! " Compulsory education, 
and co-education of the sexes, are glorified all through this 

1 Report above, p. 29. 



12 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

report, and ten years after (Report '82-83) are respectively 
practised in a score of States. 

Finally, turn over the Common School Laws. This is 
the nearest approach to a recognition of the Divinity, left 
out of the count. "No books, . . . catechisms, etc., of 
a sectarian, infidel, or denominational character shall be 
used ... in any common school, nor shall any sectarian 
or infidel doctrine be taught therein ! " ^ 

The Great Creator is not of enough importance to his 
own little creature to be either affirmed or denied before 
him, but when intruding, must be shown the door like a 
vagrant who has assuredly lost his way by happening to 
enter an American school. 

This reflection alone should strike the anyways believing 
mind with such horror for the detestable blasphemy implied, 
that he should be willing to do his utmost to prevent such 
insult to his Maker. 

But this is only a negative view of a secular system. Im- 
agine the eliminator of God changed into a pionstrous 
engine of absolute infidelity — teaching downright atheism ; 
not only denial of any duty toward, but of the actual 
existence of, a Supreme Being. Suppose the school room 
turned into a lecture hall where students are told: ''Make 
anything you like of Jesus Christ, so that you do not make 
him God! " Both the imagined and the supposed can be 
verified ; the former in the Ecoles Professionelles of France, 
the latter in the University of Geneva. The English 
Queen's Colleges are not better. 

But our American schools ? Surely, they observe at least 
the law of neutrality. Yes, we can scarcely cope with 
Europeans in sheer blasphemy — except in certain pulpits 
and from certain rostrums. ' But it is not gainsaid that pro- 
fessors in sundry colleges and high schools are beginning to 

1 Common School Laws of Kentucky, p. 23. 



X 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 3 

ape European audacity by enunciations from professorial 
chairs that make Christian ears tingle. 

But this aside, what about our Grammar and High schools 
being made the channels of influences tending toward per- 
version of Catholics and Christians ? 

To prove this was formerly oftener the case than at 
present we bring the testimony of the First Plenary Coun- 
cil of Baltimore held in 1852: 

''As it is evident that the system of public education in - 
most of our States is calculated to serve the cause of heresies 
by imbuing the minds of Catholic youth with the false prin- 
ciples of the sects, we admonish pastors to provide for the 
Christian and Catholic education of Catholic children by 
every possible means, and to watch narrowly lest they use 
the Protestant version of the Scriptures, or recite the 
prayers or hymns of the sects. It will be their duty to 
prevent books or exercises of this kind from being intro- 
duced at the evident risk of faith and piety, by constantly 
and prudently resisting these attempts of the sects ' ' (No. 
429 of Second Plen. Council). \y 

The writer cannot be an exception in his having experi- 
enced these very dangers from twenty-five to thirty years 
ago ; for when our Catholic schools were very ill supplied 
with means, in the way of funds and teachers, to impart 
good education, he was sent for more than two years to a 
Public city school, after having, for over two other years, had 
a fair trial of a Country District school and a Town Public 
school. 

Most of the superintendents, boards of trustees, and the 
greater number of teachers, all over the United States, are 
Protestants, indifferentists, or worse, actual unbelievers. ^ 
Some of the officers above named are sectarian ministers — 
witness the superintendents in Kentucky (1876-7-8-9 and 
'80), and elsewhere. 

Now, these, however impartial they are, or profess to be, 



14 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

must be often caught in advocating their particular creeds. 
For, as shall afterward be remarked of the authors of the 
school text-books, they are either sincere in their belief, or 
they are not. We charitably suppose they are. Then how, 
with all the regulations in the world of the school system, 
can they be disposed to be indifferent as to whether their 
pupils believe as they do or not, in the supposition that they 
are convinced that theirs is the true belief, the true way to 
obtain heaven? 

What is the very reading of the Bible in the city schools 
but an attempt to pervert the hearts of our Catholic chil- 
dren ? For, to tell the truth, this pretended Bible is nothing 
more nor less than the edition of King James, condemned 
not only by Catholics, but even by many prominent Pro- 
testants ; or perhaps more commonly the nondescript Bible 
Society's, whose very Lord's prayer is spurious. In the 
former, not only seven whole books and parts of others, in 
the Old Testament, and sentences in the New, are elimi- 
nated ; but what is worse, the very text of some books, 
especially in the New Testament, is perverted and distorted 
to suit the new-fangled notions of the so-called Reforma- 
tion. If other editions are used — such as Luther's, the 
Genevan or the Bible Society's — the matter only becomes 
ten times aggravated, from the fact that a whole book, or 
whole books are left out in the New Testament, and the text 
is worse corrupted. 

Not that it were not preferable that as long as the public 
schools must be sectarian, the even mutilated Bible should 
be read, and some show of religion be kept up. No ! Give 
us anything, heresy or schism, before downright atheism 
and denial of all truth. A Catholic would not have the 
Protestant Bible wiped out of the Protestant world for the 
whole material creation. Some restraint is better than none. 
But this is not the burning question. We speak of unsec- 
tarian public schools, where the reading of their one-sided 



CHRISTJAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 5 

Bible can be called truly nothing else but positively trying 
to influence Catholics and corrupt their minds from the 
truth of God to false doctrines. This is not all. Do not 
these unbiased preceptors, sometimes in spite of themselves 
and the fixed regulations, drop a little word, do a little 
action, insinuating the wish to bend to their belief the 
tender minds of the youth intrusted to them ? They do. 
The proof we leave safely in the hands of Catholics who 
have sent children to or have passed two or three years in 
Pubhc Schools of city, town or country, in any of the United 
States, where the system is carried out and the teachers are 
not practical Catholics. 



CHAPTER III. 

INFLUENCE OF FELLOW-PUPILS. 

Another evil following from the attendance of Catholic 
children on schools of public instruction, in the United 
States, is the constant association with ill-bred, unbelieving 
and immoral companions. 

All know the bad effects on morals of associating with 
vicious company. Then, where shall we find a better ex- 
emplification of the generally admitted truth than in this 
particular case of common schools ? How often do we not 
hear of and see Catholic children in these schools derided 
and ridiculed by their non-Catholic associates, on account 
of their religion and religious practices ? A child is often 
ashamed to confess himself a Catholic for fear of being 
laughed at. And how few children are there that will stand 
to the last this test of persecuting ridicule on account of 
their faith? 

We hear, only too often, of indifferent Catholics doing 
violence to conscience in order not to show themselves 
Catholics. Among those who otherwise profess to, adhere 
to the tenets and practices of their religion, there are not a 
few who openly violate the laws of the church by eating 
meat on Fridays and days of abstinence, staying away from 
Mass, omitting acts of devotion, because of Protestants they 
visit. 

If grown people thus give in to that little and criminal 

shame of their religion before Protestants, how, in the name 

of God, Catholic parents, can you expect your little boys 

and girls to bear up against the tantalizing and continual 

i6 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1/ 

ridicule of their Protestant and unbelieving school-mates, 
and adhere to their religious principles and Catholic prac- 
tices ? Or remain stanch in the midst of indifferents ? 

How often again, do we not hear of Catholic children 
being questioned and laughed at about their scapulars of the 
Blessed Virgin, which chance, in play, to escape from their 
shirt-bosoms ? What children think of this may easily be 
divined. What must they imagine when they see that, 
which they have been taught to honor and wear with respect 
and confidence in the protection of the Queen of heaven, 
whose livery they wear in the scapular — when they see this 
held up as a laughing stock, and jeered at by their profane 
associates? But these things, trifling as they may seem, 
have great weight with children's weak minds, and tend to 
pervert them. 

And this is still little to be regarded in comparison of 
other and far worse influences in connection with public 
school associations. We refer to the unrestrained immor- 
ality of many Protestant and other associates of Catholic 
children in public schools. Catholic children who are sent 
to parochial schools, with all their religious instruction, 
moral training, and the surveillance exercised over them, at 
home, at school and at church, are often bad enough. But 
this, by the acknowledgment of impartial observers, is in 
spite of their training and the watchfulness of their Chris- 
tian guardians; and whatever vices they may have, are 
mainly attributable to their associations outside. As to 
Catholic associates in public schools, it is as well to confess 
that Catholic children are often the ringleaders of the 
youthful scoundrels, bullies over their companions and the 
*' terror " of neighbors. To tell the truth, bad children of 
Catholic parents seem to be worse than others ; and it is 
natural it should be so. Neglected graces and opportunities 
tell on children as on grown people. These deformed 
children are the worse companions because unsuspected. It 

2 



1 8 THE JUDGES OF FAITH! 

is no great wonder that non-catholic children going to 
Public Schools are wicked, for the very simple reason that 
they have scarcely any opportunities of being good. Taught 
little and learning less at home, and at Sunday-school, they 
have no unvarying faith to back up the general moral 
teaching of careful, and, according to their lights, con- 
scientious parents. What can such children, among the 
masses, and outside of the families of traditional moral 
qualities and some elevated standing, know about, or care 
for, the commission of horrible sins against the Ten Com- 
mandments — in the use of the name of God in cursing, 
imposing upon the weak, stealing, injuring property, and 
secret sins unnamed ? We will not become scandal-mongers 
by retailing what is known about certain dark rooms, closets, 
and writings on the wall, liaisons among teachers or pupils 
— all signalizing the glories of co-education. Children, 
large and small, are often left unrestrained to the sway of 
their passions, in recreation, and in going to and from 
school, as long as they do not happen to be caught either 
by their teachers or the guardians of public order ! In fine, 
we may say that their morals, fundamentally and necessarily 
corrupted, reach but the standard of heathen and natural 
virtue ; since they extend to the omission of palpable crimes, 
and only restrain in so far that the children will do nothing 
wrongs as long as they are seen and threatened with physical 
punishment. 

This is said. Catholics, only of children who have chances 
of being moral at all, and have had at least some Christian 
training. According to the most trustworthy census nearly 
three-fourths of the people of the United States belong 
neither to the Catholic Church, nor to any of the fifty 
Christian sects. We have not yet spoken of these other 
associates in Public Schools, children of all sorts, sects, and 
opinions or no opinions — Jews, Gentiles, heathens, of the 
low and degraded classes of society. For none are, or can 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. IQ 

be, excluded frotn public instruction, if they obey the commQn 
regulations. We will not speak of them, in particular, but 
let the reader draw his own inference of the y€t greater 
danger on their account than by means of other school- 
mates, of the corruption of good children. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BOOKS OF PRIMARY AND GRAMMAR SCHOOLS BOOKS USED IN 

HIGHER GRADES HUME HALLAM WILLSON's "OUT- 
LINES OF history" SCOTT'S ''MARMION" PETER 

PARLEY SWINTON ANDERSON CLEVELAND DRAPER. 

If common study books are not the natural mediums of 
communicating religious information, or warping the plastic 
mind of youth by bigoted bias, observers know that even 
Spellers, Readers and Geographies are often forced to do 
duty as crammers of prejudice. If a series of Goodrich's or 
McGuffey's readers and Cornell's or Mitchell's geographies 
are not positively against Catholic sentiment and faith, they 
are negatively. These authors have had a herculean task to 
remodel and revise their works so as to be even tolerably 
unobjectionable. But what are they all in comparison of 
our own grand Catholic series, yearly approaching comple- 
tion, and giving credit to Catholics for some share in the 
building up of the world and the country. These remarks 
apply more especially to the authors used in the higher 
branches. The same kind of a negative opposition to 
Catholic truth, marked as existing in books of preparatory 
courses, is found in all the text-books of higher education, 
until we come to history. In this department the opposi- 
tion to Catholic principles changes to positive*; and Catholics 
are taught avowedly, the ''corruption'' of their '-'church,'' 
of their chief pastors, the Popes, and contempt of ecclesi- 
astical authority. 

We need only mention in the first place that Hume, 
though, perhaps, a little softened down by Smith, its latest 
20 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 21 

editor, is used during several years as a class-book of belles- 
lettres. Hume, as every reading Catholic knows, is the 
most unfair and bigoted English historian of the Reforma- 
tion. He distorts history in such a way, that scarcely a page 
of that part of his book called the history of the Reformation, 
can be read, which does not contain a deliberate untruth 
about the Catholic Church or its members in their relation 
to the Reformation. 

Hallam's Middle Ages is another addition to the belles- 
lettres course. Though, in some instances fair in his phil- 
osophy of history, and truthful to the credit of Catholic 
questions, he is often overcome by his anti-Catholic preju- 
dices ; and, blinded by preconceived theories, misrepresents 
the Church in regard to her influences on the society of the 
^'dark ages." 

Examine ''Willson's Outlines of History," ^ after /'^/<?f- 
Parley' s, used as a text-book in many of the public schools. 
But while we mention these two names in a breath, it is 
impossible to refrain from communicating the knowledge 
just acquired by a careful perusal of a list of books stereo- 
typed for use in general bookstores of supplies for public 
schools. Dead Peter Parley, it is evident, has not entirely 
ceded his honorable position of Emeritus Professor, though, 
it was thought his want of refinement might debar him as a 
public-school historian. He keeps his accustomed place, 
with somewhat "diminished head," as the author of four 
history -books in general enough use to be retained on this 
year's list (1886). Does any one need be be told that this 
simply infamous author gloats in harrowing accounts of the 
Inquisition, the Bartholomew massacre, the thousands killed 
in the wars of the Albigenses, the Hussites and so on, until 

1 By Marcius Willson — Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor and Co. : New York, Chicago. 
School Edition; 1854. Mr. Willson's late expupged edition, in the preface of which 
he acknowledges many errors in former editions, like the one under notice, and this 
to deprecate the Catholic indignation, is only an additional proof of the justice of the 
following review. Objections remain substantially the same. 



22 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

one would be astounded at the ignorant cruelty of the 
assaults of this modern Quixote against truth, decency and 
the peace of the community ? For the honor of our fellow- 
citizens we should hope that the school-books of this char- 
acter have been relegated to the ''high-class" district 
schools somewhere in the wilds of the Cumberland or Alle- 
gheny Mountains. But only without his coarseness and 
blatant assertion, Mr. Marcius Willson is not many whits 
better than the redoubtable Peter; while the worn Parley 
can muster but four volumes on the school list, Willson 
marshals a round two dozen, and seems in high favor. 
This admirable Protestant author, in introducing us to the 
history of the Middle Ages, gravely informs us (p. 237), 
following Hallam, that "they embrace that dark and gloomy 
period of about a thousand years, ' ' ending with the close 
of the fifteenth century, where "we detect the dawn of 
modern civilization " ushered in, as he afterwaids proves, by 
the Reformation. 

Up to the time of Pepin of France (note p. 256) the 
Popes "were merely /a^/iers of the church and possessed no 
temporal power." Pope Zachary, granting the usurping 
Pepin a decree against the reigning monarch, the imbecile 
Childeric, obtained as a reward for his interference the ex- 
archate of Ravenna. With this, "the union of temporal 
and spiritual jurisdiction — the proper history of the papacy 
begins,'' says Mr. Willson. 

A little further on, the noble Marcius says princes "added 
other provinces to the papal government : but a long strug- 
gle for supremacy followed between the popes and the Ger- 
man emperors; and under the pontificate of Gregory VII. 
the claims of the Roman pontiffs to supremacy over all the 
sovereigns of the earth were boldly asserted as the basis of the 
political system of the papacy. ' ' 

Speaking later, of the effects of the Saxon wars, the author 
tells us (p. 257) that in the midst of the ravages committed 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 23 

by the Franks, North Germany " passed from barbarism to 
civihzation ; for monasteries, churches, etc., sprang up in 
the path of the conquerors ; and, although the religion 
which they planted was superficial and corrupt, they at 
least diffused some respect for the arts of civilized life ' ' 

(P- 258). . 

About to tell us of the reduction of Ireland by Henry II., 
Mr. Willson gives us some curious facts about that country's 
history. The sum of the history of the reduction is quite 
pithy (note p. 292): Henry II. ''obtained from Pope 
Adrian IV. full permission to invade and subdue the Irish 
for the purpose of reforming them." The following words 
are remarkable as relating an historical certainty not known 
to many besides the illustrious historian himself. They run 
thus : '' The grant was accompanied by a stipulation for the 
payment to St. Peter, of a penny annually from every house 
in Ireland — this being the price for which the independence 
of the Irish was coolly bartered away. ' ' For our part, we 
could never ascertain that Adrian ever gave the permission 
at allj much less that he gave ''full permission," and was 
politic enough to make a good bargain of the transaction by 
forcing Henry to promise the Peter's pence from every Irish 
family. 

It seems so much like trifling to pursue Mr. Willson into 
Reformation times that we close here.^ 

The fear of offending Catholics which impelled this super- 
ficial compiler to tone down his statements in later editions, 
has induced publishers and school boards to substitute Swin- 
ton's and Anderson's General Histories in many localities. 
With what changes for the better? Some notable ones 
indeed, to show the growing force of Catholic opinion, but 
with meagre satisfaction at last. Prejudice dies by inches, 
and we have for the former wholesale condemnation- of 

1 Vide— Outlines, p. 343, 346 ; Ireland, p. 348 ; also Infallibilty, p. 331 ; Wick- 
liffe, lb. 



24 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

Catholics only the bugbear of Indulgences — "sold for 
profit," "actual pardons of guilt;" the murder of Mary, 
Queen of Scots (vide Froude's late researches !) justified and 
herself vilified ; the Thirty Years' War put upon Ferdinand 
II. "endeavoring to extinguish Protestantism;" "Philip 
II. 's schemes principally actuated by bigotry; " the glorifi- 
cation of " Garibaldi, the famous Italian Patriot; " and of 
course, the usual congratulations on the robbery of the Pope 
to consummate the grandeur of United Italy. 

Cleveland's English Literature, in which he takes occa- 
sion to blacken the character of Dryden because of his 
conversion, and abuse him like a fish-wife for his political 
opinions, is another remarkable author yet used in high 
schools. And John Dryden is not the only master of Eng- 
lish whom this book-maker pounces upon in his sketches, as 
unjustly as unnecessarily. Draper, the notorious author of 
"The Conflict between Religion and Science " — put on the 
Index of Prohibited Books along with Hume and Hallam, 
— is widely used as an authority in Chemistry, Natural 
Philosophy and kindred subjects, and has become the 
undoubted champion of Darwinism, and many of the errors 
of Huxley and Spencer. 

The great Archbishop of Toronto, Dr. Lynch, and his 
suffragan Bishops, have shown in the late contest in Canada 
about the use of Scott's " Marmion " and similar bigoted 
text-books, that they are in accord with our American 
Bishops of the First Plenary Council who sounded the alarm 
about " books . . . attacking the faith . . . totally misrepre- 
senting its teachings, perverting history itself; " which, they 
add, "are in common use in the schools," and " imbue the 
minds of children with errors." 

Finally, it might look like insulting the reader's intelli- 
gence to do more than mention the hundred and one 
different and contradictory text-books of Philosophy, 
Mental and Moral, in the hands of ten thousands of prom- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 2$ 

ising lads and smart misses in their teens, from the condemned 
Whately's ''Elements of Logic," down to Haven's "Psy- 
chology. ' ' If they have borrowed or stolen anything good 
from despised St. Thomas, Suarez or St. Liguori, it is often 
smothered mider a hodge-podge of half-truths, whole errors 
and wholesale mistakes. 

How true what many a lesser light has unconsciously 
quoted from Bellarmine : "There is greater wisdom to be 
found among Christian little ones who know the Short Cate- 
chism than among all the philosophers of old and all the 
masters of Israel could boast of" — ay, even if supplemented 
by libraries of self-sufficient philosophy-makers. 



CHAPTER V. 

WHAT SCHOOLS CANNOT IN CONSCIENCE BE FREQUENTED 

UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS OTHERS SOMETIMES MAY. 

Having hitherto made the necessary distinctions between 
the avowed objects and animus of absolutely infidel schools 
and those secular schools not designed to corrupt fi^om true 
faith and right morals, on the one hand ; and having, on 
the other, left out of the question State systems which allow 
the Church her lawful influence, it is in place to make our 
way clear by the definition of her position regarding schools 
that may or may not be conscientiously frequented. 

The principles to be taken into account, and the decisions 
rendered, are contained in the instructions addressed from 
Rome to the Bishops of the United States in 1875, ^^^ ^^ 
Ireland prior to and in 1866. 

The Church is so just she will not deviate a hair's- 
breadth from the right, on whosesoever side it be found ; and 
will never condemn outright any legal State institution, un- 
less it be manifestly and irreconcilably opposed to the higher 
law, to which all must bend. But neither will or can she 
spare the exact censure deserved for a violation of God's 
laws, by whomsoever committed, no matter what the con- 
sequences to herself or her children. For the sake, how- 
ever, of respecting a redeeming feature in individual or in- 
stitution, she will tolerate what otherwise she must reprobate. 
Finally, she is bound by the nature of her office as repre- 
sentative of God, to prevent sin and consequent loss of 
souls, by removing proximate occasions of sin, or by 
changing them to morally harmless occasions. The Pope 
26 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 2/ 

and Bishops, therefore, condemn without appeal, any and 
every system of teaching which openly advocates either in- 
fidelity, heresy, schism, or immorality — consequently, for- 
bids Catholics — under pain of deprivation of the Sacra- 
ments — to allow children to frequent, for instance, the 
atheistic schools of the Masonic Leagues or infidel societies 
of France, the professed schools of heretical or schismatical 
sects, the Queen's Colleges and Royal Trinity University in 
Ireland. Under no circumstances is any Catholic permitted 
to expose himself to such certain danger of perversion of 
his faith. If these, or other so-called schools make students 
run the evident risk of corruption of morals, they are like- 
wise prohibited. Again, if any school, no matter from 
what cause, is the direct occasion to a particular pupil of 
risk of faith or morals, in such a manner that the danger 
cannot be made remote, that child cannot conscientiously 
frequent that school. It often depends upon the actual 
character of a particular school, either private. State, or 
National, whether a child may be permitted or not to attend 
it ; as it also depends upon the peculiar circumstances of the 
pupil and the parent. 

Having debated the question backward and forward in 
Ireland, England, and the United States, for upwards of 
sixty years, the Popes and Roman Congregations have 
never consented to pronounce definitive sentence of abso- 
lute condemnation against either the National and Board 
schools of Great Britain and Ireland, or the public State 
schools of this Republic. Neither of these systems has been 
judged as so intrinsically dangerous to either faith or morals 
that Catholics are forbidden, under any and all circumstances, 
to make use of them. As to the first, the Plenary Council 
of Maynooth, while doing everything possible to intelligent 
pastoral zeal to keep all the Catholic children they can in con- 
vent or foreign religious schools, in their decrees of 1875, 
"judge," nevertheless, " that the prudent mode of action re- 



28 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

specting the system of National schools observed by the Holy 
See is to be observed by themselves." Though they " hold 
it their duty again to declare with the Plenary Council of 
Thurles that separate education for Catholic youth is by all 
means to be preferred; " whereas the ''system of National 
education is the only alternative granted to participate in 
the benefits of public revenues set apart for education," the 
Irish Bishops tolerate its use under certain precautions. The 
concessions wrung piecemeal by Apostolic valor from the 
hostile government in the fifty years' struggle for their 
jights, — since 1831 — are comprised in the privilege given 
parish priests, to choose truly Catholic masters and teachers ; 
to proscribe books of any irreligious character; to visit the 
schools in their districts when they please and order teachers 
to teach the Catechism and hold religious exercises at the 
hours appointed ; and finally, to prohibit scholars from at- 
tending the Model Schools, and teachers from being trained 
in the Normal Institutes, under the immediate government 
of the Board of National Education. To the question, '' Is 
it lawful for parents to permit their children to be educated 
in these schools?" — the Primary and Intermediate — the 
Congregation of Propaganda answered in 1866: ''Gener- 
ally speaking, it is not lawful ; but in particular cases, the 
matter is left to the judgment and conscience of the Bishop, 
whose duty it shall be to see that opportune precautions be 
used not only by himself and his priests, but also by each 
individual parent, . . . and never to cease exhorting . . . 
those, especially, who have the means, to send their x:hildren 
to other countries, where they may be educated in a Catholic 
manner." The same Sacred Congregation, in its Instruc- 
tion to the American Bishops, 1875, " considers," the Pub- 
lic State School "system by its nature, to be fraught with 
danger, and to be very hostile to Catholicity," for the sev- 
eral reasons that, i . " Such schools exclude all teaching of 
religion ; 2. Teachers indiscriminately, of every sect are 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 29 

employed, . . . who are left free to sow errors and the 
seeds of vices m tender minds; 3. Youths of both sexes 
are congregated in the same room, . . . alid are ordered 
to sit on the same bench, ... in these schools, or in many 
of them." 

If these and like ''proximate dangers of perversion be 
not made remote, such schools cannot be frequented with a 
safe conscience." Now, "proximate" means, according 
to St. Liguori, such intimate and near occasion of fall into 
sin that the most who, without sufhcient reason, expose 
themselves to it, will not escape unhurt. 

If, the Instruction continues,. " the danger of perversion 
be of such a kind that it cannot be made remote," or be^ 
removed, so as to render it morally unhurtful, " it must be 
altogether avoided at every risk, even of life itself." 

" It is left to the conscience and judgment of the Bishops " 
to decide when " Catholic parents may conscientiously com- 
mit their children to public schools. But this they cannot 
do unless, for so acting, they have . . . sufficient reason . . . 
generally judged to exist when either there is no Catholic 
school ... or none fitted to give . . . education suitable 
to the pupils' condition;" and unless the children, "at 
least, outside of school hours, diligently and properly re- 
ceive the necessary Christian instruction." 

To conclude, in the words of Archbishop Williams of 
Boston, interpreting officially for his diocese this Instruc- 
tion : " Aizy priest, however, he aiding confessions, in the 
private tribunal of penance, is free, in the- exercise of his 
faculties in this as in all other cases, to give or withhold abso- 
lution, guided by the disposition of the penitent and his 
own judgment and discretion, and his knowledge of the 
facts and principles involved." 

With the light poured upon the question by these decla- 
rations of Roman congregations, approved and confirmed 
by the Sovereign Pontiff, we may not unreasonably presume 



30 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

to answer the question proposed as the subject of discus- 
sion : ''Save in special cases, determined by Bishops and 
confessors, Cathohcs caiinot in conscience allow minors 
under their charge to be educated in secular Public Schools, 
especially where competent Catholic schools are, or can be, 
established." 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECULAR OR STATE SCHOOLS CONDEMNED BY THE BISHOPS 
OF CHRISTENDOM BECAUSE GODLESS. ^ 

What precedes is intended to serve as a statement of the 
case, a broad proposition to be proved by succeeding clouds 
of witnesses, shining with the hght of truth before the eyes 
of all the world. 

We will proceed to justify our title : "the Judges of Faith : 
Christian vs. Godless schools," by accumulating the judg- 
ments of those who are called to a participation of the 
"solicitude of all the churches," united under the Supreme 
Pontiff, Vicar of Jesus Christ "above all, God blessed 
forever. ' ' 

The Bishops of the different dioceses dispersed through- 
out the world where secular State schools exist or lately 
existed, have, in the past twenty-five or thirty years, spoken 
so unequivocally on the subject of the instruction given in 
them, that their weighty declarations can be appropriately 
adduced in proof of what has been advanced in the fore- 
going pages. 

The great Pastoral of the Prelates of Ireland issued from 
Dublin, October 20, 1871, and the corresponding document 
put forth by the Belgian Hierarchy, June 12, 1879, furnish 
the necessary data for determining what nations have been 
afflicted with State systems of schools divorced from religion. 

Wherever, in the province of education, aft accommoda- 
tion or virtual "concordat" has been entered into between 
the authorities of the State and those of the Church, the 
schools are not entirely withdrawn from the influence of the 

31 



32 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

pastors of the church, and are, accordingly, not what we 
mean by State schools. 

These everywhere banish religion from the school room 
and school grounds ; pretend to instruct in such branches 
only as will sharpen the wits to make money by trafficking, 
and cultivate the brains at the expense of the heart — placing 
man's destiny in the enjoyment of animal food or the 
amenities of "culture." Text-books and teachers profess 
to impart only that which regards what is called ' ' secular * ' 
education alone, and how to make life comfortable by ex- 
cluding eternity ; excluding, therefore, everything that has 
any reference to religious faith and religious practices. 
"Let us eat, drink and be merry — to-morrow we die," is a 
fit escutcheon for every Public-School door. 

As to the unanimity of the interested Catholic Episcopate 
in the condemnation of public or State education, in the 
sense just mentioned, we have the authority of the Irish 
pastoral referred to, that, "the Bishops of Prussia, of 
Austria, of Belgium, of Holland, of Canada, and of the 
United States, in their pastorals, their synodical addresses, 
and in their other publications, condemn with one accord 
the mixed (opposed to the denominational) system, and 
declare that education based upon our holy religion is 
alone suitable for Catholic children." 

Prussia and Austria, the two largest States, represent 
Germany; the United States and Canada, with Mexico 
and British Columbia, North America ; Ireland, with Eng- 
land, giving testimony through Cardinal Manning and the 
English hierarchy, the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the 
body of this pastoral we find it mentioned and commented 
upon that "eighty Prelates appended their names and letters 
to a pamphlet {Les Alarmes de T Episcopaf) written by Mgr. 
Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, on the spread of bad edu- 
cation by means of irreligion." These eighty may reason- 
ably speak for the Episcopate of France. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 33 

The Belgian Bishops add to these the Hierarchy of New 
Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the New World, and of 
Australia in the Southern Hemisphere. 

The Bishops of Italy, in perfect accord with the Holy 
See, have for their representative, our late Holy Father, 
Pius IX., and the reigning Pontiff, Leo XIII. ; who have 
spoken, as behooves the head of the Church, the most 
plainly about the usurpation of education by the State. 

We have to complete the round of the countries within 
the compass of Christendom whose governments have 
legalized the attempt to monopolize education, by adding 
to the long list, the little island of Ceylon. Such unanim- 
ity of single Judges of the Faith in all parts of the world 
with the official head of the Church on earth, makes their 
declarations in the matter simply infallible and irreform- 
able — the doctrine of the Church. 



CHAPTER VII. - 

WHAT THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES IN COUNCIL SAY. 

As early as 1855, the Bishops of the Province of Cincin- 
nati, in their First Pastoral, expressed the earnest desire to 
see a parochial school in connection with every Catholic 
Church; nay, on account of the "lamentable results of 
perverting influences," decided that the "erection of 
Catholic schools is, in many respects, as important an 
object as the building of new churches. ' ' 

In the Pastoral Letter of the Third Council, Cincinnati, 
1 86 1, the Fathers explain what the above-mentioned influ- 
ences are, and what the character of their results : 

" Under the influence of this plausible, but most unwise system of. 
Common School education, the rising generation has been educated 
either without any definite principles at all, or with false, at least, more 
or less exaggerated and fanatical, principles. The system itself, if car- 
ried out, is well calculated to bring up a generation of religious indiffer- 
entists, if not of practical infidels ; and, if not carried out, its tendency 
is to develop false or very defective, if not dangerous, religious princi- 
ples. The facts, we believe, sufficiently prove that the influence of our 
Common Schools has been developed either in one or both of these 
directions ! " ^ 

The cautious wording of this paragraph shows how pru- 
dently slow those Provincial Judges of the Faith were in 
fixing a note of censure before the " most unwise system " 
should have worked out its logical tendencies. 

With five years more of experiences of its evil nature and 

1 The Provincial Council of Cincinnati, held in 1882, only punctuates the teaching 
of that of 1861, rendering the same practical judgment. 

34 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 35 

workings, not only in one part of the States, but in the 
whole Union, the seven Archbishops, thirty-seven Bishops, 
two Procurators and two mitred Abbots of the Second 
Plenary Council of Baltimore, in 1866, pronounce more 
detailed sentence on the issue of American State education. 
Thus solemnly do the forty-eight august Fathers announce 
their judicial convictions : 

" The experience of every day shows more and more plainly what 
serious evils and great dangers are entailed upon Catholic youth by their 
frequentation of public schools in this country. Such is the nature of 
the system of teaching therein employed, that it is not possible to prevent 
young Catholics from incurring through its influence danger to their faith 
and morals ; nor can we ascribe to any other cause that destructive 
spirit of indifferentism which has made and is now making such rapid 
strides in this country, and that corruption of morals which we have to 
deplore in those of tender years. Familiar intercourse with those of 
false religions, or of no religion ; the daily use of authors who assail 
with calumny and sarcasm our holy religion, its practices, and even its 
saints — these gradually impair in the minds of Catholic children the 
vigor and influence of the true religion. Besides, the morals and 
examples of their fellow-scholars are generally so corrupt, and so great 
their license in word and deed, that through continual contact with them, 
the modesty and piety of our children, even of those who have been best 
trained at home, disappear like wax before the fire." 

Satisfied with the minuteness of this formal declaration 
of their predecessors of nearly twenty years ago, the still 
more imposing Conciliar Assembly of upward of eighty 
prelates at Baltimore in the year of grace, 1885, take 
higher grounds in their chapter on the Catholic Training * 
of Youth, and put forth an eloquent summary of the prin- 
ciples governing the mighty duel {iniranduni quoddam 
duellwn) between the Holy Spirit of the Church and the 
malignant spirit of the world. Intelligent readers need 
scarcely to be reminded that these utterances are dictated 
under the personal supervision of the Vicar of Christ him- 
self, who surrounded by the most eminent senate of his 



^6 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

Cardinals, prescribed to the present Archbishops of the 
Church in America the actual matter and mostly the very 
formulation of their decrees in National Council : 

''If in any age, surely in ours are the Church of God and 
the spirit of this world locked in an awful and hotly-con- 
tested combat over the education of youth. Men wholly 
inspired by a worldly spirit for many years have left not an 
effort untried to usurp the Church's office of teaching 
Catholic youth received from Christ, and deliver it into the 
hands of civil society or subject it to the power of secular 
government. Nor is it to be wondered at. For, since the 
horrid spirit of indifferentism, naturalism and materialism 
has so dominated the minds of many, that they fancy man's 
end and happiness is to be sought and can be found only in 
this temporal life and world of matter : naturally, the system 
of education, tending to elevate and direct man chiefly to a 
future life and everlasting beatitude, to some appears foolish 
and futile, to others positively pernicious and abominable. 
But the Church, whose mission on earth is precisely to lead 
each and every soul regenerated by baptism from the very 
dawn of reason up the paths of truth and justice to a super- 
natural goal, can nowise permit Catholic parents, whose 
natural and divine right and duty it is to provide for the 
Christian training of their children, to be satisfied with a 
mere worldly education, which cannot at all supply youth 
the means necessary to recognize and attain their last end." 

According to distinctions hitherto made in favor of the 
intentions of the projectors and present upholders of the 
school system in legal vogue throughout at least the English- 
speaking world, the Fathers for a moment interrupt their 
teachings to give this credit where it is due. But they do it 
only to answer the supposed objection, that the inventors 
of our merely secular educational machinery have no designs 
against Holy Church or her tender lambs, only want separa- 
tion of religious studies and profane branches, in much the 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 37 

same manner as modern society demands separation of 
Church and State. 

*^ Among those," the Council proceeds, ^'who strenu- 
ously advocate this separate secular education, not a few are 
found who profess to have no idea of either crippling Reli- 
gion or laying snares for the young. But it follows from 
the very nature of the case, and alas ! the saddest experience 
proves, that profane or State education will by degrees 
degenerate into infidel and Godless education, than which 
nothing is more destructive of the faith and morals of 
tender children. . . . ' Whosoever is not with me is against 
me' (Luke xi. 23). . . . The Spirit of the world pursues with 
unrelenting malignity the followers of the Spirit of God. It 
is, therefore, next to impossible that the innocents under the 
guidance of this profane spirit from infancy should not gener- 
ally become little by little not only blind admirers of the world, 
but very contemners of Christ and enemies of His Church. 

''But we are taught by the most luculent testimonies of 
both the friends and adversaries of the faith that the number 
of those who have fallen away from the Church, chiefly 
because they were trained in mere State schools, is so im- 
mense, that they afford abundant cause for grief to us and 
joy to our enemies. 

"Therefore, we not only exhort Catholic parents with 
paternal affection, but we command them with all the author- 
ity in our power, to procure a truly Christian education for 
their dear offspring, given them by God, reborn to Christ 
in baptism and destined for heaven ; and further, to defend 
and secure all of them from the dangers of secular educa- 
tion the whole term of their infancy and childhood ; and 
finally, to send them to Catholic, and especially parochial 
schools, unless, indeed, the Bishop of the Diocese judge 
that in a particular case other provision may be per- 
-mitted." ' 

\ ^ Cone. Plen., Bait., III. Acta et Deer., p. 97 sqq. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRITISH POSSESSIONS COLUMBIA CANADA THE ''UNDER- 
WORLD" LITTLE ISLAND OF CEYLON. 

We may claim the Diocese of Vancouver as partially 
within our territorial limits, though the greater portion of 
it lies beyond our boundaries. The very name of this divi- 
sion of North America is a reproach to us, so much truer is 
it to the right spirit of the inhabitants of a country dis- 
covered by Columbus, than ourselves, who, relegating that 
thrice honorable name to the solitary immortality of a song, 
have the shame to hear our quondam masters hail the border 
country of their vast possessions as British Columbia. How- 
ever this may be or ought to be, certain is it that the 
dividing line does not extend to the Catholic Church or 
Catholic Bishops, as Bishop (now Archbishop)- Segher's late 
lecture on the "Secular School System" may amply prove. 

On the text:^ ''Watchman, what of the night," the 
Holy Father is described as the "watchman . . . who 
denounces the erroneous teachings of the age," and 
whose . . . "condemnation falls upon the educational 
system now in vogue. The system condemned by the Holy 
Father is the one which places schools exclusively under the 
State legislation, so that the Church is denied the right to 
watch over the discipline of schools, the direction of the 
studies, the selection of books and teachers ; schools to be 
kept entirely free from the influence of the Church, to be 
conducted regardless of religion, without the worship of 

1 Lecture delivered at Victoria, 22d April, 1877, before the Premier, several mem- 
bers of Parliament and a crowded congregation. 

38 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 39 

God or the professions of Christianity. Such is the system 
which Catholics are forbidden to approve. From the con- 
demnation of that school system it follows that we require 
the education of the youth to be religious. Education must 
be preceded, accompanied and followed by religious iil^truc- 
tion." 

Hear how the Bishop laughs at the idea of the State 
schools being called gratuitous : ^'Indeed, when we look at 
the enormous amount of money lavishly spent to erect 
schools far inferior to the intended standard, we are con- 
vinced at a glance that they are not gratuitous, and rate- 
payers and tax-payers can testify that they j^^/ that your edu- 
cation is far from being given freely and gratuitously. ' ' 

To judge a man, see who are his enemies. "All Free 
Thinkers, Secularists, Atheists, members of the Interna- 
tional Society, Communists, Socialists and whatever is 
wicked, perverse and impious, is on the side of the secu- 
lar system of education." 

Then 'tis well not to overlook his friends. " On the 
opposite side we have the Pope, all the Bishops and all true 
Christians. Does not this fact, an unquestionable and in- 
disputable one — give strong presumption in favor of the 
religious system and against the secular one ? ' ' 

After dissolving four principal objections and laying down 
the doctrine of the Church, the episcopal witness for the 
British Possessions concludes thus : 

« Here I take my stand. Here, on the altar, in the presence of God 
and of Jesus Christ ; here is a link between God and man, between 
heaven and earth, and with the words of the Holy Father as my guide, 
with the combined efforts and the earnest exertions of all true Christians 
as my support, with your faith and unwavering attachment to the Church 
as an encouragement, I denounce the system of mixing both sexes in 
the same school as grossly and monstrously immoral, as a blot, a blemish 
and a disgrace on this country ; as a living scandal and as an opprobrium 
which covers its promoters and protectors with shame and infamy." 



40 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

Bishop J. B. Brondel, in the spring of 1881, joins Rt. 
Rev. L. J. D'Herbomez, Vicar ApostoUc of British Co- 
lumbia, and his Auxiliary Bishop, P. Paul Darien, in a 
petition to the Legislative Assembly of this Province of 
the British Possessions, of which the second clause reads : 
'^ That the School Law, as at present framed, is partisan, 
favoring only the sect of irreligionists ; and in abolishing 
religious instruction in order to suit those who do not want 
it, such law oppresses those who do want religious instruc- 
tion for their children." And the third: "That the 
absence of religious instruction does generally bring forth 
immoral youths, and consequently is a source of evil. "... 

The discussion this petition occasioned is embodied in 
a little pamphlet partly printed by the pupils of the Indian 
School of St. Mary's Mission, B. C. Therein, pointing to 
the higher and elementary schools built by Catholics, Bp. 
D'Herbomez adds : " Catholics have a deep and invincible 
objection to that education which is not religious in their 
sense of the word ', ' ' taxing his opponents, further on, with 
the candid admission that the State system is simply ^' God- 
less ' ' and purposely made so that it may be ' ' universal ! ' ' 
England itself, the Islands of Ceylon and Mauritius, the 
Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, are adduced 
as having been fair enough to grant subsidies to denomina- 
tional schools and as respecting the conscientious rights of 
the minority in the State. 

Further, to confirm our faith in the universality of the 
interpretation of the words of Christ's Vicar, and their 
application under every form of government, let us here 
follow up our proper authorities, by a short quotation from 
the pastoral letter of his Grace, Elzear Alexandre Tascher- 
eau, Archbishop of Quebec, in the British Dominion of 
Canada, promulgating the decrees of the V. Provincial 
Council of Quebec. We must premise, however, that in 
the province of Quebec in Lower Canada, by regulation of 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 4I 

government, Catholics have the privilege of denominational 
or separate Catholic schools for their children's use, and 
the Protestant minority enjoy the same right — an example 
we of the United States, are continually pressing upon the 
niind of our otherwise fair American public for their imi- 
tation in our regard. The decrees below, refer only to 
purely Protestant or mixed schools, where either Protest- 
antism is taught pure and simple, or, as in the American 
system, no religion is allowed to be taught. After advert- 
ing to two other decrees of the Council, the Most Rev. 
Archbishop proceeds : 

" 3. The other decree, of which we now have to speak, relates to the 
preservation of the precious gift of faith to the hearts of your children. 
Already have the preceding Councils pointed out to you the dangers 
which, in mixed schools, threaten your dear children. 

" There, in effect, say the Fathers of the Fourth Council, in their 
Pastoral Letter, under pretext of respecting the different religious creeds, 
all allusion to religion is carefully avoided, and thus these tender souls 
are gradually accustomed to consider the service of God as useless and 
indifferent. . . . But the danger is greater still in those Protestant 
schools, where children are obliged to read falsified translations of the 
Holy Scriptures, and where the principles and dogmas of faith are 
attacked with diabolical art and perseverance. . . . 

" Our Fifth Council forbids Catholic parents to send their children to 
Protestant or Godless schools ; it commands to refuse absolution to 
parents who, being warned, persist in exposing their children to this 
great danger. It reserves to the Bishop alone the power to give this 
permission when necessity requires, and he should grant it but with 
conditions which avert all danger." 

Wide is the distance to the growing '^Underworld!" 
But the same power rules there as in Canada. Is the Cath- 
olic Church different in her teachings there, though the 
identical government that permits denominational schools 
in the north of the Western Hemisphere, smothers them in 
the south of the Eastern ? 



42 THE JUDGES OF FAITH *. 

Here are the practical conclusions of the Pastoral of June, 
1879, signed by 

)}« Roger Bede, Archbishop of Sydney, 
>}< Matthew, Bishop of Bathurst, 
i{< James, Bishop of Maitland, 
>{( William, Bishop of Goulburne. 

" 2. Let parents send their children, when of fit age, exclusively to 
Catholic schools. Let them regard all other schools as no places for 
their children, who have to learn, before everything else, to save their 
souls, and who should be sedulously prepared, by breathing a Catholic 
atmosphere, by living amidst Catholic teachers and companions, and by 
an exclusively Catholic training, for encountering the perils of the world 
into which they will eventually be thrown. 

" 3. Let all Catholic parents know that they cannot, without serious 
danger, place their children in proximate danger of perversion. Let 
them bear in mind that to do so, is to set at defiance the teachings of the 
Catholic Church; and that, unless there be exceptional reasons, and the 
danger be remote, of which things the Church is the judge, no con- 
fessor can absolve such parents as are willing to expose their chil- 
dren's souls to the blighting influence of an alien creed or a secularist 
system. 

"4. Pourthly, let those who are so unhappy as to be sending their 
children at the present moment to public schools withdraw them as 
soon as possible. ... 

" 5. Fifthly, let the clergy make such instructions as these the fre- 
quent subject of their sermons and their private exhortations, and let 
them not weary till Godless and non-Catholic schools have been cleared 
of Catholic children, and until all the Catholic children in the district 
are receiving a sound Catholic education. 

" 6. Sixthly, let Bishops, priests, and people do all that lies in them, 
if necessary, at personal sacrifice, to render their present schools as effi- 
cient in every way as possible, so as to be equal in secular instruction to 
non-Catholic schools, whilst they surpass them in the genuine education 
of the will, the conscience, and the senses. 

" 7. Seventhly and -lastly, while strengthening what they have, let 
Catholics unite as one man, and insist, by means of legitimate, yet 
persevering and earnest pressure in the right direction, upon their equal 
rights with their fellow-tax-payers." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 43 

In an Appendix to the Pastoral Instruction, are given the 
decrees on Education adopted by the Archbishop and 
Bishops of New South Wales, in Provincial Council at 
Melbourne, in April, 1869. 

The lately (1880) appointed Vicar Apostolic of Colombo, 
Island of Ceylon, in the antipodes, in his First Pastoral, 
exposes the dangers of secular and sectarian teaching among 
the old descendants of the Portuguese, many of whom it 
has perverted. Mgr. Colombo Pagnani, O. S. B., cauter- 
izes the " body of false, sectarian teachers," imposed by the 
rule of the Dutch, and rouses Catholics to spurn the " mon- 
strous and contradictory doctrines of sectarian education." 
He warns them "not to send children to places where the 
atmosphere is poisonous to the faith, . . . and the Church 
is systematically assailed with abusive remarks." ^ 

1 It would seem, however, that soon after the instalment of Mgr. Pagnani, a Gov- 
ernment subsidy was granted Catholic schools, as the Bishops of British Columbia, 
in 1 88 1, cite Ceylon among countries so favored. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MEXICO TEACHERS. 

Returning from Australia and the East Indies, it ought 
to be of especial interest for the Catholics of the United 
States to know the sentiments of the episcopate of our sister 
and Catholic Republic of Mexico. The most illustrious 
Archbishops of Mexico, Michoacan, and Guadalajara, Dr. 
Jose Pelagio Antonio de Lebastida y Davalos, Dr. Jose 
Ignacio Arcida and Dr. Pedro Loza, " as Archbishops of the 
three ecclesiastical provinces of the country," speaking "in 
their own names, and in that of their venerable brethren, 
the illustrious Bishops of the other dioceses," in the year 
1875, issued a common pastoral instruction : "To the Ven- 
erable Clergy and Faithful, Concerning the Organic Law 
Promulgated by the Sovereign National Congress, on the 
loth of December of last year (1874), and Approved by the 
Supreme Government on the 14th of the same month." It 
consists of four principal points. "The first of these points 
is the absolute prohibition of all religious instruction in the 
greater part of the schools and educational institutions of 
the country." 

Now, say the most Rev. Archbishops, in discussing this 
point — the only one we will consider — as " faith comes by 
hearing, ' ' and it is most particularly in schools for children 
that faith is created in man, it must be evident that "the 
rigorous prohibition of religious instruction in the majority 
of our schools, is equivalent, according to this, to laying 
the foundation in an early future, of entire generations with- 
out any religion whatever ; of innumerable families con- 
44 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 45 

demned to a merely animal existence, and of nations of 
Godless and lawless atheists." Then, by a sleight of Chris- 
tian eloquence, attributing their own sentiments to their 
spiritual children : '' Not without cause are you filled with 
horror, beloved children ; for if children come to be gener- 
ally educated without the slightest idea of religion, before 
many years, perhaps, all the Christian faith of this land, so 
devoted and so Catholic, will disappear." And these are 
to be the effects of Godless public schools ! After detailing 
how a remedy is to be applied by Catholic schools being 
established everywhere, the illustrious prelates, in measured 
words admonish parents of their duties in attending to the 
religious instruction of those under their charge ; and then 
warn pastors what they must do in the matter. They must 
"frequently, and in unmeasured terms impress upon the 
heads of families, the imperative duty which devolves upon 
them, to look, by preference, after the religious instruction 
of their children. In the Confessional carefully examine 
your penitents on this subject, and in compliance with the 
rules of authors of sound morals, do not be too ready to 
give absolution to such fathers and mothers in whom you 
shall discover criminal carelessness in this matter, without 
satisfying yourselves of their firm purpose of amendment 
in the future. Earnestly encourage the faithful to make 
the subscriptions we propose for the support of schools 
in which the Christian doctrine will be given the prefer- 
ence." 

We cannot conclude with this comprehensive Pastoral, 
without quoting in full, for the benefit of Catholic teachers 
in our public schools, the closing words of the Archbishops 
of the Republic of Mexico on this point : 

"Our pastoral ministry also imperatively obliges us to say a word 
to those teachers, male and female, who are in charge of schools 
supported by the pubhc funds, and who, though otherwise pious 
persons, may unhappily have had the weakness to issue a protest 



46 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

conflicting with their duties as Catholics, and placing them in a 
position which precludes their receiving the Holy Sacraments. Know, 
beloved children, that in order to remove this impediment, it will be 
sufficient for you in any faith-confessing manner, approved by your 
Bishop, to restrict the protest issued to what you are allowed as 
Catholics, to protest against. You must also understand that, having 
complied with this duty regarding the aforesaid restriction, you can 
retain your positions in these institutions so long as you are not required 
to teach from impious or heretical text-books, etc. ; but as soon as this 
occurs, you cannot continue in your positions as teachers without run- 
ning manifest danger of apostasy from your divine faith. 

" We say the same to the directors and professors in secondary or 
professional institutions of learning, both as regards the restrictions and 
as to the giving up of their positions if they are called upon to teach 
from any book or other prohibited publication, in which the Catholic 
dogmas taught by the Church are attacked." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE EPISCOPATE OF ERIN THE BATTLE OF SIXTY YEARS 

NOT YET DECIDED ITS PRESENT ARRAY. 

The testimony of the truly great Cardinal of England, 
Henry Edward Manning, in the Council of the Vatican, 
that St. Patrick counted more sons among its purpled 
princes than any other national Patron, is nowhere better 
exemplified than in the marshalling of the leaders of the 
world-wide contest between Church and State for the pos- 
session of the souls of the little ones of Christ. 

It has passed into a proverb that Ireland contains but a 
fraction of the race it bore and has seen scattered like the 
other people of God to the ends of the earth — not as cursed 
by Him they crucified, but as the standard-bearers of the 
Cross to a hundred nations. Whether in the colonies of 
the British Empire, under the undimmed sun of the island- 
continent beneath the equator, or manning the outposts of 
civilization from Sitka 4900 miles to the Grand Bank off 
Newfoundland ; whether in the free air of America or on 
the fettered shores of their native land, tlie upwards of 
twenty millions of Irishmen stand united in invincible battle 
array, but waiting the word of command from their spiritual 
chiefs to fight the good fight for their own and their chil- 
dren's souls. If there be some hundreds, — aye, thousands 
— of renegades from their faith and their true nationality, 
who are recreant to their own glory and defy the authority 
of their mitred rulers by deserting their ranks and ranging 
themselves under the senseless tyranny of secret murderers, 

47 



48 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

they are but exceptional, unworthy bearers of the name — 
Irish and Cathohc. 

What is that unanimous word of command reverberating 
from the continents to the islands of the ocean ? They 
have proclaimed it everywhere they rule as Bishops over the 
Church of God ; they repeat it twenty-fold from the 
mother country : 

" That a system of education, the dangers of which have been pub- 
Ucly and solemnly pointed out by the Church, which is the Pillar and 
Ground of Truth — a system against the dangers of which the history of 
modern Europe bears witness, will meet with your marked reprobation ; 
that you will not yield it encouragement or patronage of any kind, but 
that you will save your children from its influence. . . . " 

This summing-up of the teachings of the National Council 
of Thurles in i860, is but the middle echo of their declara- 
tions from '24, '26, '49, '59; whose reduplications are 
prolonged through '62, ^6^, '6'j, '69, '71, '75, '82, down 
to the present hour. And what this condemnation expressed 
regarding higher secular schools is applied thus to all : 

" The solemn warning which we address to you against the dangers 
of those collegiate institutions extends, of course, to every similar estab- 
lishment known to be replete with danger to the faith and morals of 
your children — ^to every school in which the doctrines and practices of 
your Church are impugned, and the legitimate authority of your pastors 
set at naught ! " 

It is throwing words away to repeat in detail the separate 
declarations of the succeeding fifty years from '24 to '75. 

It is to this unyielding persistence of front-facing every 
move of the enemy that the Irish Hierarchy may, under 
the blessing of God, attribute the hard-bought victories 
gained against the National Schools. That these are any- 
ways tolerable to Catholics, and in many respects are merely 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 49 

defective denominational schools, none on earth is to be 
thanked but their tireless and learned body of teachers. 

Let it not be understood, however, from what is said 
here and in Chapter V. , that the Bishops allow their people 
to be put off with half or three-quarter concessions in either 
department of education — Primary, Intermediate or Higher. 

They know the aim of the National System — from the 
child's primer to the infidel text-books of the University, 
and that its promoters are '' determined to resist every 
concession to our just demands, and clamoring for a settle- 
ment of the Irish education question, are endeavoring to 
force upon us Godless systems, which as Catholics we must 
condemn." 

They have cut some of the virus out of the elementary 
and intermediate schools, and they now set their hands 
vigorously to work to complete their operation on the re- 
maining members of these departments, and lop off, if they 
cannot heal, the higher institutions — colleges and univer- 
sities. Their action regarding the Queen's Colleges, train- 
ing Model and Normal Board Schools, and the Trinity 
University, following the explicit '' nominatim " condemna- 
tion of Pius IX., is of public knowledge. The establishment 
of the Catholic University under Dr. John Henry Newman, 
in 1854, and the provisions made in 1875 ^7 ^^^ Plenary 
Council of Maynooth regarding the Catholic Normal 
Schools, show the extent of the evil wrought by the Godless 
colleges and infidel universities, as well as the prudent care 
of the hierarchy to provide an efficient remedy. The fight 
along the whole line is not either finished or decided, as 
will be demonstrated by recent discussions and official pro- 
nouncements, both regarding the education of youth and 
of young men. 

In the fall of 1882, at an immense concourse presided 
over by three Bishops, the famous Doctor Nulty, the Bishop 
of Meath, after some introductory remarks, said : 
4 



50 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

" That education, unnaturally divided from religion, was the enemy 
with which the Catholics of the present day found themselves con- 
fronted. It was not a veiy dangerous or formidable enemy after all, for 
education without religion was an absurdity and impossibility, and a 
mere myth ; and it was only by an abuse of language that it was char- 
acterized as education at all. No nation had made nobler, more gener- 
ous, and more continual efforts in the cause of Catholic education than 
had the Irish nation, but they had always scornfully repudiated every 
branch of knowledge that was not thoroughly Christian and thoroughly 
Catholic. The Royal schools, the diocesan schools, the Erasmus Smith's 
schools, and the Kildare-street Society schools, and even the National 
Education schools, at an early period of their history had struggled for 
centuries to destroy the faith of the people by adulterating the education 
of the country with the poison of Protestant or Presbyterian heresy; 
but all their efforts ended in shameful and ignominious failure. On the 
other hand, the Queen's Colleges of the secularists have made, and are 
still making, desperate efforts to effect the same thing, although skilfully 
availing themselves of the lesson taught by the defeat of their predeces- 
sors. They were adopting a new plan to carry out their nefarious 
designs. 

" They aimed at the destruction of the Catholic faith, not by poisoning 
the education of the country with heresy and irreligion, but by banishing 
religion away from it altogether. They wished to surfeit their souls by 
an excess of secular education, at the same time that they would starve 
them in their highest and noblest faculties by refusing them any religious 
education at all." 



These words are nothing if not a repetition of the authori- 
tative resolution of the annual autumn meeting of all the 
Most Rev. Prelates in 1882. This resolution was adopted 
in the fall of 1884 by the Bishops under the presidency of 
Dr. McGettigan : 



" We call upon the Irish Parliamentary party to urge "generally upon 
the Government the hitherto unsatisfied claims of the Catholics of Ire- 
land in all the branches of the Education Question, and we earnestly 
hope that the lovers of justice and fair play in the House will co-operate 
with them." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 5 1 

We quote from the semi-official writer on this text in the 
January, \%^^, Dublin Review :^ 

" The Bishops, it may be noticed, include in their resolution the whole 
education question in its threefold aspect. Space will not allow us to 
treat of the inadequate payment of the masters and mistresses in the Irish 
National Schools — of the wretched, quibbling, red-tape formality about 
their retiring pensions, which renders legislation on the subject well- 
nigh illusory — of the still more inadequate and unfair treatment of the 
nuns who teach in the convent schools on a salary little better than a 
mere starvation allowance — of the ungenerous, stinted, half-hearted way 
in which an instalment of justice has been doled out towards the train- 
ing of Catholic schoolmasters and mistresses, and of the unfair partiality 
with which the mixed training school in Marlborough Street is treated 
in contrast with the Catholic training Colleges — nor of the injustice done 
to the Catholic intermediate schools which have been deprived of one-half 
of the results fees secured to them by Act of Parliament, whilst the Royal 
and other endowed schools still remain in undisturbed possession of 
State-aid, for which, in most cases, they show but very poor results." 

Passing by discussion of other aspects, we find that the 
Bishops, having been convinced that the former Queen's 
University ''did not," as officially announced, satisfy them, 
hoped for a larger instalment of justice in its substitute of 
'81 — the Royal University, until that too ''was weighed 
and found wanting." Though half the Senators of the 
latter, nominally, were Catholics, on account of circum- 
stances the non-Catholics counted a working majority to the 
detriment of the constituency of the Catholics. Again, the 
Irish Ecclesiastical Record Q>ioN., 1884) proves that at the 
autumn Examination of the Royal University "principally 
established to meet the wants of Roman Catholics," "the 
paper set in Metaphysics contained, out of nine questions, 
eight which were taken verbatim out of such authors as Bain, 
Mansel, Herbert Spencer, and other text-books followed in 
the Queen's Colleges." 

1 The Irish University Question — Very Rev. P. Huvetys, C. S. Sp. 



52 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

Upon which came, with usual promptness, the resolution 
of the Bishops : " That considering the danger to which 
Catholic students are exposed in the Royal University, as 
revealed by the questions set for examination in Metaphysics 
— questions practically necessitating the reading of anti- 
Christian works most dangerous to Catholic faith, we request 
that a meeting of the Episcopal Education Committee be 
held as soon as possible, to take such steps as may prevent 
those dangers ..." Thus, the reviewer comments, the 
Royal University has established beyond doubt '' . . . that 
Godless education is not racy of Irish soil, and that the 
millions of the English Exchequer cannot make it take root 
there." 

And, strange to learn, the Irish Bishops have urged com- 
petition with the secular Godless schools, and Catholic stu- 
dents " have come out of the struggle with credit to them- 
selves and their creed." . 



CHAPTER XL 

ENGLISH BOARD VS. VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS ENGLISH HI- 
ERARCHY AND CARDINAL MANNING. 

The history of the every year struggle between the old 
Voluntary Schools of the different denominations and the 
growing National Board Schools in England, is comprised 
especially in the past fifteen years — since the Education 
Bill of 1870, matured by Hon. W. E. Forster in 1876, and 
taking effect from January 1, 1878. 

The simultaneous discussions of the present status of 
the fight in the leading American and Irish magazines,^ 
enable us to give very satisfactory and detailed information, 
specially interesting to all concerned in the solution of the 
burning question in the English-speaking world. It is re- 
marked that ' ' there is much in the zeal and self-sacrifice of 
the" bare million of " Catholics in England, in their strug- 
gle for religious liberty," notably regarding educational 
rights, " which might serve " the growing eight millions of 
our country ''as an example"; more especially as "the 
lines of explanation and defense of the ' school question ' 
in Great Britain are nearly identical, if not the same, as in 
the United States. ..." Both of our authorities agree 
that, prior to Mr. Forster' s Bill, "the education of the 
poorer classes of the population was derived entirely from 
the Voluntary Schools . . . established by the various 
religious bodies in the country," and maintained entirely by 
denominational subscriptions, with the sole exception of the 

^ Catholic World, February, 1885 ; Dublin Review, January, 1885. 

53 



54 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

grants from the Consolidated Fund paid from 1838 to 1878.^ 
Catholics, as usual, draw less than their share. The bulk 
of the schools, therefore, had been religious, and their 
denominational character had been more or less strictly 
respected. Secular education was practically unknown in 
the peoples' schools, until '' this first decisive step in the 
direction of State education was taken," and Christian 
England, following the guidance of — may be — well-meaning 
but religionless leaders, began to favor exclusive secular 
methods, similar to the Public School system of America. 
The plan consisted in ignoring distinctive tenets and con- 
triving a compromise of " Broad Christianity, . . . watered 
down, till it became colorless enough to take any after-tinc- 
ture . . . poured into the little vessels . . . receiving it." 
But, while Catholics recognize it as the right and duty of 
the State to foster education for the helpless poor, they can- 
not give up for their own children the privilege of impart- 
ing instruction in religion as a primary necessity. As Mr. 
Forster said, the object of the Board system was " to com- 
plete the . . . Voluntary system, to fill up gaps, ..." and 
English Catholics insist that '' all efficient public elementary 
schools are recognized by the State," and as such are truly 
National. The Voluntary schools are entitled to pro-rata 

1 Here is a late record from the London Register : "We learn from the returns of 
the Educational Department that during the year which ended on the 31st of Decem- 
ber, 1878, a sum of ;^io9,495 9s. 9d., was paid to the Catholic schools of England and 
Wales, making altogether, from 1839 to December 31, 1878, ^11,085,987 4s. 2d., or 
about one-third the amount paid to British, Wesley an, and other schools during the 
same period. The number of scholars on the register out of a total number of 3,495,- 
892 was 191,341, a*d the total income was ;;{;i99,i27 i6s. 9d. The average income 
per scholar, was ;,^i los. 8d., and the average expenditure ;^i iis. sd. The amount 
paid to Catholic schools in Scotland for the year ending on the 31st of December, 
1878, was £19,370 8s, 7d., being an increase of ^^1,912 6s. 8d., upon the previous 
twelvemonth. The amount paid to the Catholic schools in Scotland, from 1839 to 
December 31, 1878, was ;^i32,25i iis. 6d. The number of scholars in attendance on 
the register was 33,634, the total income amounting to £41,816 los. gd. The income 
per scholar was £1 13s. i%:d. and the expenditure £1 12s. 8d. Out of a total 
number of 13,091 honor certificates, Catholic schools took 531, a result which is 
certainly encouraging." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 55 

grants and rates. But Catholic schools do not receive their 
just quota, and besides, must be so emasculated by the Con- 
science Clause — restricting religious instruction to after- 
school hours — that they are practically colorless Board 
schools. Thus the ever-persecuted children of the Church 
are triply taxed — first, for the General School Rate ; second, 
for their own Denominational schools^ and third, " sl por- 
tion of that subscription is demanded for the support of the 
Board schools. ' ' '■ While, therefore, insisting like the Irish 
Bishops, that their own proper schools shall not be turned 
over to become the property of the Board Management, the 
hierarchy in England, headed by Cardinal Manning, pro- 
pose to relieve the Voluntary schools of all denominations 
by this simple plan : 

" I. Let the school-rate or tax be levied over the whole 
population, as a part of the general taxation of the country. 

"2. Let all schools, with or without religious teaching, 
partake of the school-rate, as they partake now of the 
grants of the Consolidated Fund, under all the conditions 
of the Statute Law, and of the Minutes and Codes of the 
Committee of Privy Council." ^ 

The institution by law of the National Board schools 
places them in the condition to dictate terms of existence to 
all others. The managers have the purse-strings of the 
public treasury in their hands. They can determine what 
allowance is to be granted a Voluntary school or vote it 
unnecessary and cripple or destroy it. They may build in un- 
occupied localities and decide that no rival shall be tolerated. 

The Bishops and faithful are joining hands with all de- 
nominations to save their schools from annihilation or prac- 
tical paralysis.'^ 

1 And this in the face of the Board schools counting 7,026, with average attend- 
ance of 1,028,904, as against Voluntary schools, 20,304, with 2,098,310. 

'■^ The plans of reorganization of the Board system advocated by Cardinal Manning 
and his co-workers are nearly identical with the Seven Propositions of the educa- 
tional reform in the American State system, advocated for twenty years and dis- 



56 TH^ JUDGES OF FAITH: 

The ''Voluntary School Association," the ''Catholic 
Union of Great Britain" and the "Catholic Poor School 
Committee ' ' are complying with the resolutions passed by 
their Lordships, the Bishops, in their meeting in Low Week, 
1884, " to instruct, to excite and direct in the agitation of 
this question." 

The teaching of the British Prelates is of a piece with their 
action in favor of God's schools vs. Godless schools. In 
one of their recent joint Pastoral letters they say : 

" We have already declared that Education without Christianity is 
impossible ; or, to use a modern phrase, that the secular and rehgious 
elements of education are inseparable; that education is essentially 
religious, and therefore that where religion is excluded there is no edu- 
cation. Hold fast by the old traditions and axioms of your fathers. 
Schools without religion may give instruction, but education they cannot 
give ; they cannot educate a people. Let it be called national instruc- 
tion, but, in the name of Christianity, let it not be called education. 
Not only is education without religion impossible, but instruction with- 
out religion is instruction without morality. A people to whom morality 
is not taught cannot be moral ; but Christian morals cannot be taught 
without religion ; for what is morality but the law of duty, which arises 
from our personal relations toward God and our neighbor ? And how 
is it possible to teach this law of duty without a knowledge of the per- 
sons toward whom these relations exist ? But to know this — unless 
men are going to reduce a Christian people to the level of Deists — 
Christianity must be taught in our schools. Christian morality cannot 
be taught without the knowledge of Christ, and that again, by necessity, 
involves the knowledge of His histoiy. His teaching. His command- 
cussed since 1881 in the " Family's Defender Magazine," by Hon. Zacliary 
Montgomery of California. It is " strictly non-partisan and non-sectarian," and 
among its endorsers " we have leading members of both political parties and religion- 
ists of nearly every creed, including Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, 
Methodists, Baptists, Campbellites, and Jews, as well as Free- Thinkers " — among 
whom twenty Catholic Prelates and twenty-odd Protestant ministers. Mr. Mont- 
gomery is among our most vigorous and nervous writers and deserves the thanks 
of the entire community for his long, unselfish labors. Though his sterling magazine 
has temporarily suspended he has not lost hope of the final success of his just princi- 
ples, for 

" Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; 

The eternal years of God are hers." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 5/ 

ments, His incarnation, His divine personality. And what is this but 
dogma ? for religion without dogma is not Christianity. In whatsoever 
school, then, religion is not taught, morality is not taught ; and where 
morality is not taught, the heart, the conscience, and the will of chil- 
dren are not educated for the duties and conflicts of life. What can be 
more false, what more fatal to men, to families, and to States, than to 
call this education ? " 

The special utterances of Cardinal Henry Edward Man- \ 
ning are so well known, it is with some reluctance we repeat \ 
even his latest in " The Month,'' ^ January, 1883. He has 
his eye on our Republican Common School system, which 
" has proved " how a nation's character can be changed 
from its Christian traditions and virtues by means of God- 
less schools. It is " already bearing its fruits. ' ' After 
describing the present condition of Catholics in regard to 
school matters, much in the same manner as detailed above, ^, 
he concludes thus : | 

" Let no one be deceived by thinking that these two systems (secular \ 
and religious) can be reconciled or mingled with each other. They are | 
mutually exclusive. "We have to choose between them. The sooner we *^ 
make up our mind the safer for us. Every year we are losing ground. 
Every year the antagonist system, fraught with antagonistic principles, is 
penetrating the legislation and structure of the commonwealth, and 
tainting the brain and the blood of the governing classes. It has 
already reduced the national universities to schools of secular science 
and literature. It is throwing off Christianity from the public life of the 
State, and relegating it to the private life of men. . . . We are debtors 
above all men and to all men, to preserve inviolate, at all costs and at 
all privations, the unbroken tradition of Christian education in the whole 5 
circle of our colleges and schools, from the majestic and venerable col- % 
leges of Stonyhurst and Ushaw to the primary schools of our humble | 
missions in the green villages and in the busy towns of England." | 



CHAPTER XII. 

LES ECOLES PROFESSIONELLES — LA LIGUE d' EDUCATION 

SCHOOLS UNDER THE EMPIRE THE INFIDEL NATIONAL 

* SYSTEM UNDER THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE. 

In Speaking of the school question in France, we must 
distinguish two periods, as we have had to do in England, 
viz. : -One of private infidel schools prior to 1875, ^^^ ^^^ 
other that of the public infidel system inaugurated since 
that date. There seems to have been a simultaneous mot 
(T ordre given by the Lodges of Carbonari in the extreme 
South, and the Masonic affiliated Lodges in the Middle and 
North of Europe in this fatal decade, 1 870-1880. No one 
needs details of the robbery of Rome, the proclamation of 
the Republic in Paris, and the almost immediately follow- 
ing establishment by law of irreligious State systems of 
schools in Italy, France, Belgium, England, and Prussia. 
France took the lead ; but not without having prepared the 
ground by means of indirect government interference under 
the Empire, and direct foundation of professed infidel soci- 
eties for miseducation. Napoleon III., with outward show 
of protection for religion and its interests for child and 
man, in the eighteen years of his reign, by his truckling 
policy, and underhand dealing with the Secret Societies, 
of which he was an undoubted member, wrought horrid 
havoc among the Catholic men of France. He hesitated 
not to consent to the semi-secularization of the Christian 
schools. Inch by inch the State officials encroached upon 
the rights of the parish priests in their parish schools ; and 
ell by ell the Intermediate and Collegiate establishments and 
58 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 59 

Universities were dragged away from the influence and 
power of control of the Episcopacy. Sometimes the State 
would seem to recede and give back a part of its unlawful 
acquisition of control ; but it was only to fasten the more 
uncompromisingly, at the next fitting opportunity, on more 
than it had relinquished. The hypocrite emperor and his 
ministry — half Liberals, and a third sneaking infidels — 
winked at these outrages in private, and in public prated 
of Catholicity and Christian liberty. It was from these 
ill-concealed intentions the public Leagues of infidel educa- 
tion sprang. So much has become public property regard- 
ing the infamous Ecoles Pi'-ofessionelles for females, by means 
of the world-wide circulation of Mgr. Dupanloup and the 
eighty French prelates' " Les Alarmes de I'Episcopat," that 
it were useless to reproduce it. Suffice it to repeat that 
these schools were founded and carried on principally by 
women openly professing contempt of religion and moral- 
ity, for the mental and consequent moral degradation of 
the youth of their own sex. They must have succeeded 
lamentably well to have become so common and frequented 
that they drew down the combined condemnation of the 
Episcopate. 

The other set of schools, no better than the first, was 
founded by a Freemason, whose declarations in founding 
them only convince us of the identity of his purpose with 
that which Freemasonry proposes to itself, as set forth in its 
official organs. The third article of the statutes of the 
'' League " declares that " neither politics nor religion shall 
have any place in the education " its members impart. We 
quote the pamphlet: "And lest there should be any mis- 
take as to the meaning of this article, one of the leading 
Masonic journals {Le Monde Magonique ; "La Solidarite," 
October, 1866) declares that religion is ' useless as an instru- 
ment for forming the minds of children ; and that from a 
certain point of view it is capable of leading them to aba7idon 



60 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

all moral principles. It is incumbent on us, therefore,' con- 
cludes this journal, ' to exclude all religion. We will 
teach you its rights and duties in the name of liberty of 
conscience, of reason, and in fine, in the name of our 
society. . . . ' " M fine, to sum up, in the name of the 
devil, would this refined Frenchman have added, had 
not his French etiquette restrained him from imitation of 
the members of that honest, but boorish, Italian society, 
that come out boldly, and call themselves ' \ Disciples of 
Satan." 

With the advent of the Advanced Republicans to power 
after the withdrawal of the Prussians from the heart of 
France, there came forebodings of a repetition of the 
chronic craziness of many representative Frenchmen, 
when religion is brought under discussion. Cardinal j 
Manning lays down for us the principles of the New ! 
French system of schools, devised by sworn enemies of \ 
any faith, and by law established — namely : ' 

" I. That education primarily and properly belongs to ^ 
the State. / 

" 2. That the schools belong to the State. / 

"3. That the children belong to the State. | 

''4. That the State has no rehgion. ; 

^^5. That the formation of the national character belongs- 
to the State. - 1 

''6. That the formation of the teachers of the peoplej 
belongs to the State. j 

"7. That no one shall teach the people except by patent 
of the State." -J 

It was not without unanimous and individually repeated 
remonstrances from the authorities of the Church that these 
principles were applied practically to the peoples' schools. 

During the presidency of Thiers, many individual French 
Bishops put in protests in sundry cases of the re-establish- 
ment of the Christian Brothers' Schools, and of those of 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 6 1 

Other religious teaching bodies. And in September, 1875, 
glory be to God ! and thanks to the persistent perseverance 
of the Bishops, headed by the modern Bossuet, Dupanloup, 
seconded by the Catholic president and upheld by their 
Christian subjects, Catholic education seemed to triumph 
over the machinations of the infidels under the leadership 
of Thiers, Gambetta and Renan. And Catholic France, 
freed once more, could point with pride to the secure 
cradles of her infants, guarded by the tutelary religious 
bodies, and thank God her next generation should be unlike 
the last. 

Proof: Witness the heading of the Common Pastoral of 
''their Eminences, the Archbishops of Rouen and Paris; 
their Graces, the Most Rev. Archbishops of Bourges, Sens 
and Rheims; their Lordships, the Rt. Rev. Bishops of 
Meaux, Beauvais, Seez, Orleans, Blois, Versailles, Chartres, 
Troyes, Saint-Brieuc, Soissons, Chalons, Bayeux, Verdun, 
Nancy, Evreux, Limoges, Nevers and Amiens : To the 
clergy and faithful of their dioceses, announcing the creation 
of a free University in Paris and the opening of a subscrip- 
tion to defray the expense of starting the establishment." 
The peoples' schools were re-baptized as Christian. 

But alas ! and alas ! for the fondest Christian hopes ! 
The septennate of McMahon surrendered to Grevy and 
Gambetta in 1878, and in 1879 Jules Ferry's famous in- 
famous Education Bill, with its VII. clause prohibiting 
unauthorized religious to teach in France, aroused all the 
energies of the French people and Clergy to pierce this 
hellish treachery and like Laocoon save their sons from the 
infidel serpents. 

In the year of grace, 1882, the elements of the revolu- 
tion again seemingly triumphed and celebrated their tradi- 
tional French valor by suppressing the remnants of the 
religious teaching orders. The last phase of the glorious 
victory was the removal, by order of the prefects of Paris 



62 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

and the provinces, of the crucifixes remaining in the 
primary school rooms. 

The French Bishops under the new French school system 
have issued two important rules which are as pertinent to 
Catholic parents in this "Land of the Free " where religious 
preferences are tolerated, as in revolutionized France under 
the regime of the Republic. 

In a circular from the Catholic Education Society the 
Bishops have laid down the following rules: "i. If the 
Public (National) School may sometimes be submitted to, 
it should never be preferred ; and parents are bound, unless 
it is absolutely impossible, to send their children in prefer- 
ence to a Christian school. 2. Parents, forced to submit to 
the Public School because there is no free (that is. Catholic) 
school in the parish, and because they have not the means 
of either resorting to domestic tuition or of sending to a 
free school at a distance, are bound to watch closely over 
their children's souls. If their faith is in danger, they 
should require the school teaching to be brought back to 
respect for religion ; and, if their complaints are not listened 
to, their imperative duty is to withdraw their children from 
such a school, whatever the consequences of this reso- 
lution." 

The substance of the conclusion of a pastoral from the 
pen of Cardinal Guibert of Paris may fitly close this chapter. 
It is nothing more or less than a particularising of the rules 
of conscience in regard to public State schools. 

What is to be told Catholic parents about their duty in 
regard to avoiding public schools of infidelity and making 
use of Catholic schools — exclusively Catholic, for their off- 
spring? And under what obligation? anything less than 
conscience ? 

" In view of the question thus submitted, the duty of parents is evi- 
dent, and it belongs to us, as pastor, to remind them of it in the name 
of God and of conscience. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 63 

" Christian parents, you owe education to your children ; this obliga- 
tion written upon our statutes is still more deeply engraved upon your 
hearts. Endeavor, then, to impart to those you love and whose protec- 
tion has been confided to you, the blessing of a Christian education." 

Moreover and in particular, in order that no Catholic 
parent may say his whole duty has not been marked out for 
him : 

"If there exist anywhere schools of pestilence wherein they blaspheme 
God and His Son, where they despise the blessings and the rites of His 
Church, no reason of human interest can excuse the crime of those 
fathers and mothers who would cast the souls for which they are respoti- 
sible into so fatal an atmosphere." 

This in the first place. But this is not the only kind of 
school that is to be shunned with horror by Catholic parents 
and children. 

Secondly : 

" If elsewhere, irreligion, not daring to reveal itself, gives place to 
indifference; if the teacher, in order not to excite just susceptibilities, 
has no other resource than to observe neutrality in matters of religion, 
do not flatter yourself with a mistaken security, by depending upon your 
own solicitude to supply what is wanting in education. 

" The mind and the heart of the child are bewildered between two 
contrary influences ; he cannot understand how religion, absent from 
the schools, can occupy the first place in the family circle, nor why he 
is obliged to love and to serve a God whose name is never mentioned 
by his teachers." 



CHAPTER XIIL 

CONTINUATION OF TESTIMONY OF BISHOPS, PASTORS OF NATIONS 

PRUSSIA AUSTRIA PRINCE BISMARCK PRINCE AND 

CARDINAL SCHWARZENBERG. 

The varying fortunes of the Church in Cathohc Austria 
and Belgium and in Protestant Prussia and Holland during 
the past quarter of a century have been nothing if not phe- 
nomenal. Strange as it may sound, the favor shown to her 
children in Prussia prior to 1870, has been legally denied 
them in Belgium to such an extent, that what liberal Pro- 
testants voluntarily conceded and secured by law in the 
matter of Catholic interests and especially education, was 
wilfully subtracted by "Liberal" Catholics. To be sure, 
all was not inwardly sound and hearty which appeared such 
outwardly, among the Northern Germans and the Dutch, as 
events in their contemporary history have proved. Certain 
it remains, however, that the now persecuting government 
of Prussia showed a very fair face in its treatment of the 
rights of Catholics to the teaching of their religion in public 
schools, under the predecessor of the present aged emperor 
and during the first half of the reign of Frederick William 
III. So enthusiastically had the privileges accorded moved 
the hearts of Catholics in the cause of " Christian " Germany 
against " infidel " France, that they unanimously joined the 
crusade of the pious emperor to crush Napoleon and humble 
blatant Paris. No sooner, however, had they seconded 
Bismarck in seating the king upon the imperial throne than 
the black-hearted minister turned round on his friends and 
inaugurated that series of persecutions from the effects of 
64 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 65 

which he boasted it would require a divine institution indeed 
to escape with its Hfe. As is their wont, the agents of 
destruction were detailed to war first against defenceless 
children and youth. The first blows struck, here as else- 
where, were aimed at professors in the higher schools, uni- 
versities and even in the seminaries. As soon as opportunity 
offered, every facility was granted the '' Old Catholic ' ' rebels 
against the decisions of the Vatican Council to foist heretical 
theologians upon Catholic students. 

The Bishops of Prussia in 1871 had occasion to address 
most manly remonstrances, in the face of the world, to the 
new emperor, on this question : as may be seen from the 
answer of the Bishop of Ermland to the Minister of Public 
Instruction, in the case of the intruded Professor Wollman. 

The great conqueror of France was constituted wet-nurse 
to the precious infant Church of the Dollingers, the Reu- 
schls, and Reinkens' ; and liberal support was voted them 
out of the funds saved by adroitly starving the Catholic 
clergy and deposing the hierarchy. The next move after 
the dispersion of the shepherds was to despoil the flock. 
The lambs offered the least show of resistance. The Gov- 
ernment appointed its minions as teachers of Catholic chil- 
dren in spite of the opposition of the Church, which natur- 
ally claimed the right of granting " Canonical Mission " to 
none but Catholic masters. 

In 1875, t^^ introduction of unsectarian {confessionslos), 
mixed {simtdtaji) schools in the German Empire, for in- 
stance, in Cologne, called out the vigorous protest of not 
only Catholics, but even of Evangelical Protestants ; as 
evidenced by the enunciations of the District Protestant 
Synod of Saarbriicken. 

This system of secular schools has been by degrees ex- 
tended to the limits of the Kingdom of Prussia, not 
excepting the annexed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. 

Without attempting, now, to give any special pronounce- 
5 



66 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

ments of the episcopal champions of Church and school, 
we may instance among many similar docmiients the Lenten 
Pastoral of Mgr. Andrew Raess, Bishop of Strasburg, issued 
in the year following the establishment of Governmental 
schools, and occupied exclusively with educational topics. 

It is to be not only hoped, but expected from the suc- 
cessful valor of the Central Party in the Reichstag, sustained 
in its action by the Church authorities, that the resistless 
power exerted to bring the Iron Chancellor to his knees in 
the abrogation of the May laws, will not fail to force equal 
justice in the recognition of Catholic parents' rights to 
educate their offspring. 

Turning to the other great German Empire, we discover 
not even proverbially Catholic Austria free from the rabies of 
the modern secularizing mania. What has tied the hands 
of the royal House of Hapsburg in its government of an 
overwhelming Catholic majority of the population of Aus- 
tro-Hungary? Naught but the promoters of all the tur- 
moils of the Continent — fallen Catholics leagued with 
Secret Societies. 

Fortunately here, and, as we shall see presently, in Bel- 
gium, their secret wiles and open force have not had the 
success elsewhere achieved. The true children of the 
Church, once aroused from their tepidity and torpidity, 
have manifested their latent powers of resistance, thanks to 
the watchful admonitions of their spiritual guides, con- 
firmed by the action possible to monarchs in constitutional 
governments. No one organization of Catholic notables, 
cleric and lay, has effected so much in this struggle against 
^'Liberal" Ministers and Representatives, as the Catholic 
Congresses of Germany and Belgium, formed on the model 
and acting on the lines of defense adopted by similar Con- 
gresses in their neighboring country.^ 

1 Perhaps, indeed, Congresses of this nature do not suit our American and Eng- 
lish-speaking Catholics in the world. They have, at least, never been seriously 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 67 

At the Session of May 7, 1877, of the Catholic Congress 
of Vienna, the School Question came up and the discussion 
brought out an able and pointed address. 

His Eminence Prince Frederick John Joseph Celestin 
Cardinal Schwarzenberg, Archbishop of Prague, delivered 
an address on Christian Education, from which the follow- 
ing extracts are taken. In illustrating the harmony that 
should exist between the school and the family, His Emi- 
nence said : 

" The secular school can only meet the wants of a family without 
religion- — it can never satisfy a family with religious convictions. 

" Parents who are obliged to trust their children to Godless schools 
are all the more bound to look after the instruction these children receive 
and to endeavor, so far as possible, to remedy the dangers of such 
schools. The more the accomplishment of this duty is made difficult 
or impossible to parents, the greater and the more terrible becomes the 
responsibility assumed by the State in adopting the system of compul- 
sory education." 

In August, 1885, the nine Archbishops and Bishops of 
Prussia wrote : 

" Growing youths, during their school-days, and, indeed, in conse- 
quence of dominating influences in school, are exposed to impressions 
calculated only too surely to wound Catholic sentiment, sow seeds of 
doubt in their minds and destroy purity of heart. We are powerless to 
hinder these dangers from pressing upon our youthful flock. . . . We 
are painfully conscious that our hands . . . are yet tied. . . . You 
know, and it becomes cleai-er to us eveiy day, that the whole venom and 
wickedness of hell is manifested in the thousands of ways of seduction 
ever open to impressive youth." 

advocated. But if we are ever to be blessed with political influence enough to re- 
solve our Public School question in favor of equal rights, it will have to be created 
by some such organized action. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CONCLUSION OF TESTIMONY OF BISHOPS, PASTORS OF NA- 
TIONS THE NETHERLANDS CATHOLIC BELGIUM. 

We learn from the common pastoral of the Bishops of 
Belgium, headed by the renowned Victor Auguste Des- 
champs, late Cardinal and Archbishop of Mechlin and 
Primate of BelgimTi, published at the end of 1878, that 
the Liberals are rampant again in their malice against the 
Church and especially religious education. The Bishops 
had manfully saved education in the troublous times about 
1830, and finally made a concordat with the civil govern- 
ment in 1842 — the era of the rise of governmental schools — 
by which it had been expressly stipulated that secular and 
religious instruction were to go on hand in hand. It was 
thought that as this agreement had worked to the satisfaction 
of all for thirty-six years, the question of religious influence 
in the education of Belgian youth was settled for good and 
all. But now the Bishops complain : 

" . . . . But it is not privileges but rights that the enemies of religion 
are now striving to rob us of; it is souls, the souls of childhood and 
youth they would rob the Church of. Placing their anti-Christian 
hatred above the most sacred interests of society, of the country and of 
the family, they have resolved to banish religion from the school, to 
drive Jesus Christ, our God and our Saviour; Jesus Christ, the Divine 
Teacher of mankind ; Jesus Christ, the Author and Principle of time 
civilization, from popular education ! . . . ." 

Deducing the commission of educating mankind as to 
their religious duties from the very constitution of the 
Catholic Church, what is the natural consequence ? 
68 



CHRISTIAN* VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 69 

" .... It follows that the Church has the divine right to interfere in 
the school in which the education of Christian childhood and youth is 
carried on, and to give this education the impress of a moral and reli- 
gious character. It follows, too, that parents, whose first duty it is to 
rear their children in a Christian manner, are strictly bound to provide 
them with a religious education. And when they relinquish a portion 
of this duty to public or private schools, it is their right and duty not 
only to require that religion be taught there, under the direction of legit- 
imate authority, but also that all the instruction and all secular influences 
contribute to transform their children into virtuous and docile sons, 
subject to the authority of the Church and of the State," 

The Belgian Hierarchy, therefore, demand " , , . in the name of 
conscience, in the name of the rights and duties of baptized children 
and Catholic families, the continuance of the law of 1842, which, while 
giving the State a veiy large share in the direction and superintendence 
of schools, at least leaves the Chuixh, wherever it is honestly carried 
out, a degree of freedom and authority sufficient to fulfill her sublime 
mission. . . : " 

In their pastoral of June 12, 1879, ^^^ Belgian prelates 
headed by the Cardinal, pronounce sentence, after sum- 
ming testimony : 

" These facts considered, based upon the authority of the Holy See, 
and docile to its teachings — in union with the Bishops of the whole 
Catholic world, and especially with the Venerable Fathers of the Second 
Plenary Council of Baltimore, (1866, Title IX., Chap. I.) — of the First 
and Fourth Provincial Councils of Westminster (1852-1873) — of the 
First, Second and Third Provincial Councils of Quebec (185 1, 1854, 
1863) — of the First Provincial Council of Halifax (1857) — of the 
Provincial Council of Sydney (1869) — of the Provincial Council of 
Utrecht (1865) — of the Provincial Council of Cologne (i860) — -^f the 
Assembly of the Episcopate of Ireland, held at Maynooth, on August 
18, 1869, and in Dublin, in October, 1 87 1, in the discharge of our 
pastoral duty, we denounce the school system which the civil power 
proposes to apply to our country as dangerous and pernicious in its 
nature. We declare that it encourages the propagation of infidelity and 
of indififerentism, and that it is an attack upon the faith, the piety and 
the religious rights of the Belgian People, and for these reasons we re- 
prove and condemn it." 



70 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

November 9th, 1879, Mgr. Bracq, Bishop of Ghent, sent 
forth a Catechism on the Question of Primary Instruction, 
laying open the principles and history of the whole struggle, 
which ends with this new crusade-cry: " Vive I'enseigne- 
ment Catholique ! A bas la loi des ecoles, Dieu le veut ! ' ' 
All the hierarchy pronounced, finally, September ist, 1879 * 

" ' Parents who neglect to give their children Christian education and 
instruction ; those who let them frequent schools in which the ruin of 
their souls is inevitable ; lastly, those who, having either a Catholic 
school near them, or at least the means in other ways to give their 
children a Catholic education, nevertheless confide them to the schools 
called neutral, without sufficient reason and without taking necessary 
precautions for averting from their children the proximate peril of spirit- 
ual ruin — all these parents, if they persevere in their conduct, cannot 
receive sacramental absolution : this is an evident deduction of Catholic 
morals.' 

" Such are the teachings of the Congregation of the Holy Office in its 
instructions to the Bishops of America, dated June 30th, 1875. 

" No more can the teachers be absolved who, in their classes, make 
use of books or allow their pupils to read from books dangerous to faith 
or morals. The same applies to those who teach the Catechism to their 
pupils without canonical institution^ which they ought to have for that 
purpose, and which cannot be really granted to them. 

" In the same category are pupils preparing for the office of teacher in 
the official nomial schools, the parents of such pupils, and the professors 
in these normal schools." ^ 

And all this, notwithstanding the lying machinations of 
Mr. Frere Orban and his minions, was, after thorough 
examination, endorsed by the enlightened and moderate 
Leo XIII. 

1 Though, possibly, there may be some doubt as to the application of the later 
decision of the same Holy Office regarding the State system of schools in Belgium, its 
wording seems to solve that doubt. It reads : "The official schools cannot be fre- 
quented with a safe conscience ; so great a danger should be avoided at any risk 
of worldly interests, or even of life itself." Taken as it r^ds, this would be the 
first sentence of absolute condemnation of a whole State system in all its depart- 
ments which Rome has officially pronounced. It is accounted for by the professed 
infidel animus of the founders and promoters of such schools, created expressly to 
rob children of their faith, and teach infidelity outright. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 7 1 

In consequence of the episcopal condemnations thus ap- 
proved by supreme authority, 3000 Catholic schools were 
filled with scholars deserting the State-run concerns, and 
2500 official teachers resigned, all in the space of four 
months ! 

In two years alone, from 1880 to 1882, there was not a 
single province where there had not been an increase counted 
by thousalnds in the new Catholic schools. Those of Bra- 
bant alone contained last year (1883) nearly seven thousand 
children more than they had two years before. The total 
numbers are for all Belgium : 

In 1880 — Primary Schools, 455,179; Ecoles Gardiennes 
(or Infant Schools), 125,201 ', both classes together, 580,380. 

In 1882 — Primary Schools, 479,280; Ecoles Gardiennes, 
143,157; both classes, 622,437. 

Making the total increase during two years, 42,057. 

The public schools in Belgium are closing up for want of 
scholars, while the Catholic free schools are progressing 
beyond all expectations. Seventy-six communes, with a 
public school in each, have authorized their closing. There 
were only 287 in the seventy-six schools, or a little over 
three children for each, while the free religious schools have 
10,000 pupils or 131 children per school. 

In this year, 1885, ^^^^ Catholics have forced legislation 
on schools back to its original just provisions, and if they 
remain but firm and support their king by returning loyal 
Catholic representatives, there can be no doubt as to their 
retention of their hard-fought victory. 

In the Netherlands, finally, the Bishops versus State 
schools, as far as Catholics are concerned, is a case, that 
since the establishment of entirely secular schools under the 
direct management of the State, in 1857, has been always 
open, and an every-day battle of right against might, religion 
against infidelity and its insatiable abettors. The writer has 
learned, though, from several native Hollanders, that in 



72 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

Limburg, a compromise had been extended to Catholics, by 
which priests were allowed to give religious instruction in 
public schools outside of school hours. 

We make this last quotation from the Belgian pastoral, 
above : 

" The Bishops of Holland, from the time when this detestable system 
of instruction of youth was introduced into the public schools of that 
country, have not ceased to combat it, to reprobate, and condemn it. 
Among other documents we think it useful to put before you the letter 
addressed to the Catholics of Holland in 1866 by Mgr. Schaepman and 
his Suffragans, the Right Rev. Bishops of Bois-le-Duc, Haarlem, Rure- 
monde and Breda. We give you an extract from their letter : 

" ' In order that a school may deserve, in every way, the confidence and 
approbation of Catholics, it is not sufficient that the Catholic religion, as is 
pretended, should be treated there with respect, that is to say, be omitted 
to be mentioned. It is further necessary that the school teach the chil- 
dren, and make them practice, the Catholic religion. In schools of 
young children social or civil instruction is very intimately bound up 
with religious instruction ; the religious principle penetrates the pro- 
gramme, and religion always makes its influence felt there. Religion 
comes in in everything ; the great truths of the faith, the morality of the 
Gospel, the maxims of Catholic piety are constantly called to mind, and 
the teacher knows how to make them fit in opportunely with the various 
school exercises. ... 

" * What can we think of schools from which the authority of the 
Church and the influence of religion is banished ; where there is no room 
for anything beyond a certain natural morality? . . . ' " 



CHAPTER XV. 

PIUS IX. THE RIGHT OF THE CHURCH TO THE SPIRITUAL 

CONTROL OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

Turn we now to that center of unity, by which the whole 
Church teaching and taught, throughout the compass of the 
globe, is held together, itself taught and governed infallibly. 

In the Pope are primarily and essentially, by divine 
appointment, the true sense and sentiments of all the 
faithful, as well sheep as lambs. Bishops as laity, when- 
ever there is question of a doctrine of faith or morals, or 
anything which is necessary for the preservation of faith or 
morals. .^ 

In him all speak, all affirm, all deny ; for he is the infal- 
lible Doctor and Pastor of all Christians. We will then 
weigh well his every word, when he speaks of this all-im- 
portant subject of education. Neither Council nor Bishop 
has spoken as plainly on public education as the one infal- 
lible teacher of all, Pius IX., of holy memory. 

These are the words of the late Supreme Pontiff, address- 
ing the Bishops of the Catholic world, on the dangers to 
which youth was then (and is no less now) exposed, and on 
their duty as chief pastors in this regard : 

" It is incumbent upon you," he says, " and upon ourselves, to labor 
with all diligence and energy, and with great firmness of purpose, and 
to be vigilant in everything that regards schools, and the instruction and 
education of children and youths of both sexes. For you well know 
that the modern enemies of religion and human society, with a most 
diabolical spirit, direct all their artifices to pervert the minds and hearts 
of youth from their earliest years. Wherefore, they leave nothing un- 

73 



'74 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

tried; they shrink from no attempt to withdraw schools, and every 
institution destined for the education of youth, from the authority of 
the Church and the vigilance of her holy pastors." — Encyl. Letter of 
Pius IX., ?>th December, 1849. 

The same Sovereign Pontiff in two allocutions, severally 
of 1850 and 1 85 1 {In consistoriali, November i. — Quibus 
luctuosissimis, September 5) formally condemns the assump- 
tion of power by the State by which it arrogates to itself 
the right to the whole direction and management of com- 
mon Public Schools in Christian nations. This condemna- 
tion, extracted from the two allocutions, is given as the 
forty-fifth of the condemned propositions of the famous 
'' Syllabus." The proposition, as there worded, affirms the 
right of the State to this exclusive power. The contradic- 
tory of a proposition condemned as heretical, false, or 
erroneous, is true. This, then, is the judgment of the 
Pontiff: 

" The exclusive control of Public Schools, in which the youth of any 
Christian State are educated, . . , may not and must not appertain to 
the civil power ; nor belong to it to such a degree that no other author- 
ity whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the 
discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the confer- 
ring of degrees, and in the choice or approbation of the teachers." 

Here we have a clear definition of the right of the Church 
in every Christian land, so to interfere in the public educa- 
tion of Christian youth, that she shall be consulted and 
obeyed in whatever concerns the spiritual direction of the 
schools of public instruction. 

Going still further and insisting on the same subject, the 
Holy Father, in the contradictory of the forty-seventh fol- 
lowing proposition, more explicitly explains his meaning by 
declaring that even "the best theory of civil society does 
not require that Public Schools (populares scholae) open to 
the children of all classes, and generally, all public insti- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. ^^ 

tutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophy, and 
for conducting the education of the young, should be freed 
from all ecclesiastical authority, superintendence and inter- 
ference. Nor (further does it require) that they should be 
fully subjected to the civil and political power, in conform- 
ity with the will of the rulers and the prevalent opinions of 
the age." 

From this we conclude. Catholics ought indeed, where 
they cannot lawfully avoid it, to pay their taxes towards the 
maintenance of the State schools, in order to obey, as St. 
Peter says, their civil rulers " even when unjust " ('' etiam 
dyscolis"), and to set a -good example. But they are 
obliged none the less to cry down the injustice itself and 
never yield a jot or tittle of their inalienable right to edu- 
cate their children according to the dictates of their con- 
sciences and the commands of the Church. 

Finally, in the next following proposition, in order the 
forty-eighth, the Pope teaches Catholics their exact duty 
with regard to public education as by law established.^ 
And here we would wish to call the undivided attention of 
our Catholic readers, who, according to their faith, revere 
in the Sovereign Pontiff the Vicar of Christ upon earth, 
and obey his voice, when teaching them doctrines or moral 
duties, as the voice of God Himself. 

" Catholics cannot," says the true proposition, " Catholics 
cannot approve of a system of educating youth which is un- 
connected with the Catholic faith and the power of the 
Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural 
things, and onl;f , or at least, primarily, the ends of social life. 

As an earnest of his determination to fulfill his duty, Pius 
IX. , in special rescripts to the Bishops of Ireland (October, 
1847, October, 1848) condemns " nominatim " the "Queen's 
Colleges," on account of their ''grievous and intrinsic dan- 
ger to faith and morals." 

1 See the original condemned propositions, 45, 47, 48, in Appendix No. I. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PIUS IX. ON THE WORKING OF THE GODLESS SYSTEM IN 
GENERAL HIGH SCHOOLS IN PARTICULAR. 

The two latter propositions taken from the " Syllabus," 
are but a part of the infallible teaching of Pius IX. on State 
schools. They were originally extracted from the compre- 
hensive epistle of the Pontiff to the Archbishop of Friburg 
in Breisgau (^Quiim non sine, July 14, 1864)/ and placed in 
the form of negative and false propositions in the '^ Sylla- 
bus " to be condemned as such. The contradictory bearing 
is thereby declared as the true and orthodox doctrine to be 
held on the subject of education. 

Now it will be interesting in the true sense, that is, most 
useful, to extend our investigations into the inner depths of 
this same ''Epistle on Education," and bring to light its 
treasures of truth. In order that none may doubt this 
epistle was intended for the instruction of all concerned, 
the apostolic brief to the Archbishop of Friburg was, in 
the same year, 1864, expedited to every Bishop of Southern 
Germany. 

Says the Pontiff: 

" It is not wonderful that these unhappy efforts (to spread irreligious 
and revolutionary principles) should be directed chipfly to corrupt the 
training and education of youth ; and there is no doubt that the greatest 
injury is inflicted on society, when the directing authority and salutary 
power of the Church are withdrawn from public and private education, 
on which the happiness of the Church and of the Commonwealth 
depends so much. For thus society is, little by little, deprived of that 
truly Christian spirit, which alone can permanently secure the founda- 

1 See the text of this memorable epistle, in full, in Appendix No. II. 
76 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. JJ 

tion of peace and public order, and promote and direct tlie true and 
useful progress of civilization, and give man those helps whicli are neces- 
sary for him in order to attain after this life his last end, eternal hai:)piness." 

The universal Doctor of the faithful in the next few par- 
agraphs embraces the whole subject of education : first 
speaking of it in general and its influences ; then descend- 
ing to the particulars of secondly, higher ; and thirdly, 
primary instruction. The whole ground is covered from 
the highest to the lowest grades of instruction ; including 
not only primary and elementary teaching and schools, 
but higher education as given in high schools, academies, 
colleges and universities. 

" And in truth a system of teaching, which not only is limited to the 
knowledge of natural things, and does not pass beyond the bounds of 
our life on earth, but also departs from the truth revealed by God, must 
necessarily be guided by the spirit of error and lies. And education, 
which, without the aid of the Christian doctrine and of its salutary 
moral precepts, instructs the minds and molds the tender heart of youth, 
naturally so prone to evil, must infallibly produce a generation that 
will have no guide but their own wicked passions and wild conceits, and 
l:)e a source of the greatest misfortunes to the commonwealth and their 
own families." 

If our Public Schools confined their teaching to mere 
worldly knowledge, this would be enough to condemn them. 
But when they go farther and ^'depart from the truth re- 
vealed by God," as many of them do by teaching heresy 
and practical, if not theoretical, infidelity, then, doubly, 
must they '' be guided by the spirit of error and lies." Is 
there more than one such erring and lying spirit ? 

" But if this detestable system of education, so far removed from 
Catholic faith and ecclesiastical authority, becomes a source of evils, both 
to individuals and to society, when it is employed in the higher teaching, 
and in schools frequented by the better class, who does not see that the 
same system will give rise to still greater evils, if it be introduced into 
primary schools ? " ^ 



yS THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

It has been said in the foregoing paragraph that " educa- 
tion " without distinction "which without the aid of the 
Christian doctrine and its salutary precepts, instructs . . . 
youth . . . must infaUibly produce a generation that will 
have no guide but their own wicked passions and wild 
conceits." . . . 

Still, we may not deny that by way of exception and 
under peculiar circumstances, good priests and watchful 
Bishops exercise the power to allow well-instructed young 
men and women to complete their advanced courses in public 
higher institutes of learning, when the danger of perversion 
is rendered remote. The "detestable" Godless system 
works great evils in advanced schools: it works " greater 
evils" in " primary schools. " 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PIUS IX. EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE MASSES OF 

THE PEOPLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS SCHEMA CXV. OF 

THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 

This portion of our subject is the most important of all 
— the cuhninating point to which our previous writing has 
been but a broad and soHd foundation. Says the well- 
known proverb of Holy Writ, quoted by Pope Pius VII. 
(Encyc. Letter, July lo, 1800), on this very subject : Train 
up "a. young man according to his way, even when he is old 
he will not depart from it. ' ' But let us yield the word to 
Pius IX. : 

It is in primary schools " above all that the children of the people 
ought to be carefully taught from their tender years, the mysteries and 
precepts of our holy religion, and trained with diligence to piety, good 
morals, religion and civilization. In such schools, religious teaching 
ought to have so leading a place in all that concerns education and in- 
struction, that whatever else the children may learn shozild appear sub- 
sidiary to it. The young, therefore, are exposed to the greatest perils 
whenever, in the schools, education is not closely united with religious 
teaching. Wherefore, since primary schools are established chiefly to 
give the people a religious education, and to lead them to piety and 
Christian morality, they have justly atti:acted to themselves, in a greater 
degree than other educational institutions, all the care, solicitude, and 
vigilance of the Church." 

Useless to put in the crucible words already seven-fold 
refined ! The enemies of the Church — aye, and of man — 
knowing full well these simple and fundamental principles, 
have ever striven, like ravening wolves, to tear the little 
lambs from the sheepfold of Christ, estrange them from 

79 



80 ^ THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

their true shepherds, and raise them far away from the 
paradise of reHgion and love in the barren pastures of infi- 
dehty and diabolical irreligion. Listen to the Chief guar- 
dian of souls on earth : " The design of withdrawing pri- 
mary schools from the control of the Church, and the 
exertions made to carry it into effect are, therefore, inspired 
by a spirit of hostility toward her, and by the desire of 
extinguishing among the people the divine light of our holy 
faith. The Church, which has founded these schools, has 
ever regarded them with the greatest care and interest, and 
looked upon them as the chief object of her ecclesiastical 
authority and government ; and whatsoever removed them 
from her, inflicted serious injury both on her and on the 
schools. Those who pretend that the Church ought to 
abdicate or suspend her control and her salutary action upon 
the primary schools, in reality ask her to disobey the com- 
mands of her divine Author, and to be false to the charge 
she has received from God of guiding men to salvation." 

By the word of the Vicar of Christ, who, divinely en- 
lightened, perceives the ruses of the enemy of salvation and 
all his agents upon earth, we know it is ultimately our faith 
they wish to destroy. The Church, and her God-revealed 
religion is the object of their invidious and deceitful at- 
tacks. It is eminently her life and her life's blood they 
seek. True to the principles of the seed of the deceitful 
serpent of Genesis, they are in eternal enmity with the 
Church and her children, seeking to bring her and hers to 
infinite evil "by lying in wait for her heel." But God be 
thanked and praised forever, the divine Church of the Al- 
mighty Eternal '^ shall crush their head," and confound 
their schemes by her watchful authority, exercised by her 
head and chief, seconded by those " whom the Holy Ghost 
has placed Bishops over the whole flock to rule the Church 
of God . . . purchased by His own blood. " (Acts. xx. 28.) 

How will they, representing the Church, foil the evil 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 8 1 

one ? By conforming to the words of Christ's Vice-gerent, 
their head and the head of all the militant faithful. By 
doing their ''bounden duty" in every country where the 
government, or others, publicly or privately, seek to divorce 
education from religion by tearing the children of the Church 
from her bosom to nurse them on the lap of the pagan god- 
dess of '' Liberty." 

They will do it first, remotely, then proximately, as fol- | 
lows, according to the words of Pius IX.: " . . . In | 
whatever country this pernicious design of removing ths 
schools from the ecclesiastical authority should be enter- j 
tained and carried into execution, and the young thereby \ 
exposed to the danger of losing their faith, there the Church I 
would be in duty bound ... to use her best efforts and to i 
employ every means to secure for them the necessary Chris- I 
tian education and instruction." This first and remotely. "^^ 
There is another and proximate means which successfully 
wards off the dangers that are threatening Catholic youth 
with moral destruction. It is the fulfillment of their duty as 
the chief pastors of the Church in every country adopting 
the mixed and Godless system of education, by which, as 
the teaching Church, they " must feel themselves obliged 
to warn all the faithful and to declare that no one can in 
conscience frequent such schools, as being adverse to the 
Catholic Church. ' ' ^ »«^.-^ 

1 According to the Docnvtenta Cone. Vaticani collected by Bishop Conrad Mar- / 
tin, a PostulaUmi to this effect was handed in by a commission of Bishops : " That | 
all mixed schools, without exception, be declared pernicious and condemnable by the | 
Council." Here follows the text of the schema on schools : " CXV. De Ecclesia : "M 
Inter sanctissimorum morum violationes, quae nostra aetate . . . perpetrantur, ilia 
est vel maxime perniciosa qua fraudulenti homines contendunt scholas omnes direc- 
tioni et arbitrio solius potestatis laicae subjiciendas esse. Quin eo usque progress! 
sunt, ut ipsam catholicam religionem a publica educatione arcere, atque universim, 
scholas nullius professionis religiosae, sed litterarias tantumodo esse debere dicant. 
Contra hujusmodi sanae doctrinae morumque corruptelas, ex ipso fine ecclesiae . . . 
ab omnibus agnoscendum est jus et officium, quo ipsa (Ecclesia) pervigilat, ut juven- 
tus catholica imprimis vera fide et Sanctis moribus rite instituatur . . . Quare declar- 
amus et docemus, jura praedicta atque officia ad Ecclesiam pertinere." (Martin, 
Documenta Concilii Vaticani, pp. 47, 76.) 

6 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

BISHOPS IN THE UNITED STATES ARCHBISHOPS PURCELL AND 

ELDER — BISHOPS GILMOUR AND ROSECRANS THE BISHOPS 

IN KENTUCKY, DRS. MCCLOSKEY AND TOEBBE. 

After meditating on the foregoing chapters, especially 
the three immediately preceding, we might repeat the words 
of the Irish Bishops : ''Peter has spoken through Pius ; the 
question is settled, ' ' and say, there is no further need for 
inquiring as to the individual sentence of the Judges of the 
faith of the Church in any particular country. But because 
the final wish, "would that the error, too, were at an end," 
is not yet, although now long after the condemnation of the 
error, accomplished ; we feel inclined to pile up the evi- 
dence on this subject to the very skies, and manifest it 
especially before the eyes of our Catholics of the United 
States, by raising a massive monument, crowned with a far- 
reaching beacon, and radiating with light, to the testimony 
of our own Most Rev. and Rt. Rev. Prelates. We will 
introduce, first, Most Rev. Wm. H. Elder, Archbishop 
OF Cincinnati. 

When Bishop of Natchez, Mgr. Elder sent forth the 
spirited and practical pastoral, written from the diocesan 
synod of Chatawa in 1874. Here is the kind of frank 
declaration we receive from a Bishop on the subject of 
our guidance as to our conscientious duty as Catholic 
parents : 

" On this subject we have no new instruction to give. The declara- 
tions of Holy Mother Church have been of late years made so numerous 
and so clear, that there is nothing for a Catholic to do but to obey them, 
82 . 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 83 

or else renounce his religion, ' He that will not hear the Church, let 
him be to thee as the heathen and the publican,' (Matt, xviii. 17,) 
We have simply declared in the Synod that where Catholic schools can 
be established it is sin to send Catholic children to other schools," 

Obey the Church by keeping your children from the pub- 
lic schools or go out of her and be a pagan and heathen. 
Here is a test. Apply it, parents. No ; even that is not 
enough for the Rt. Rev, Bishop to say, but the system is 
''false." In it the children's minds '' are kept systemat- 
ically excluded from the truths and practices of religion." 
''Illiberal against the dearest of liberties — the liberty of 
parents to train according to their own conscience the chil- 
dren God has given them and of whose training they must 
give a rigorous account. ' ' And he concludes this part of the 
subject by this fervent appeal — as a warning to Catholics 
and non-Catholics of our beloved country : 

" God grant that our fellow-citizens may see, before it is too late, how 
this method of rearing children is bringing them up without the fear 
of God, and is helping the desolating march of dishonesty and every 
immorality through the land." 

The late Most Rev, J. B. Purcell, who survived to be 
the Patriarch of the Hierarchy of the United States, in his 
Lenten Pastoral of 1872, after speaking of other matters, 
thus pronounces in decided favor of our thesis, and in 
almost the self-same words as we have used : 

" Besides the duties to our own souls there are others which are due 
to those for whose salvation we are responsible to God and society. 
The first of these is education. If the fall of a great Christian nation 
(France) is directly chargeable to the lectures in the schools of law and 
medicine, to a coiTupting literature, to immoral plays and indecent 
operas, we should leave nothing undone to save our youth from occa- 
sions of similar perversion. The Catholic school is the nursery of the 
Catholic congregation. The one should stand under the protecting 
shadow of the other. This duty they do not discharge who send not 
the children under their care to a Catholic school when in their power. 



S4 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

We see not how they, who wilfully and deliberately neglect this duty, 
can worthily approach, or be conscientiously admitted to the sacraments." 

We will not insult the intelligence of our kind readers by 
commenting on words so plain as those of the venerable 
prelate, renowned justly for more than one staunch episcopal 
virtue, but chiefly for his bold leadership, banner un- 
furled and motto displayed, in the struggle for genuine 
Catholic education for Catholics. He speaks indubitably 
plain Anglo-Saxon as ever an honest man would want to 
hear : 

" In the founding and endowing of schools to the utmost extent of 
our limited means, we Catholics thought that we were acting in perfect 
conformity with the spirit of the State and Federal constitutions. But 
what is our astonishment to find ourselves oppressed with taxes instead 
of meeting with the support and sympathy of the State authorities and 
our fellow citizens. If our youths are, therefore, deprived of the bene- 
fits of education, if they grow up " in ignorance and vice, depraved and 
demoralized, it will be known who are to blame for crimes against society 
and the cost of houses of refuge, penitentiaries and jails. Their souls, 
while yet pure, their parents will not sacrifice for the kind of education 
received in Godless or sectarian schools." 

No one has spoken more plainly, and we may add, more 
trenchantly on this subject than Rt. Rev, Richard Gil- 
MOUR of Cleveland, in his Lenten pastoral of 1873, which 
^' raised such a storm of rage in all paperdom," as he says 
himself, in his reply, — one of the most telling blows to 
editorial self-sufficiency that our hierarchy can boast of 
since the stormy days of Bishops Hughes and England. 
The better half of the pastoral is taken up with education. 
At the conclusion of a scathing refutation of would-be edu- 
cators, and exhortation to parents to make their stand for 
their rights, even at the polls, he writes these decisive words : 

" It is our most solemn injunction and most positive command, that 
every church in the diocese have its school. Where a congregation 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 85 

cannot at once build both church and school, let them build the school 
house and wait for the church. There is little danger of the old losing 
their faith, but there is every danger that the young will." 

Neither is there any mistaking the meaning of the Bishop 
in the following passage : 

"On the school question there can be, and must be no division. 
Either we are Catholics or we are not ? If we are Catholics we must 
leave after us a Catholic youth. And experience has clearly proved that 
this cannot be done unless the children are early taught that they are 
Catholics. We must not sleep while our enemies are working. Nor 
must we forget that the public schools are organized and managed for, 
and in the interests of, Protestantism." 

The line is drawn. Will we be Protestants or not? If so, 
says the Bishop, echoing the sentiments of his venerable 
metropolitan, send your children to the public schools. If 
not, keep them away. 

What is of practical importance, though, in this whole 
matter, for Catholic parents to know well, is what follows. 
Mark well : 

"We solemnly charge and most positively require, every Catholic in 
the diocese to support and send his children to a Catholic school, 
where good Catholic schools exist, and where it can be honestly said 
a child will get a fair, common-school education ; if parents, either 
through contempt for the priest, or disregard for the laws of the Church, 
or for trifling or insufficient reasons, refuse to send their children to a 
Catholic school : then, in such cases, but in such cases only, we authorize 
confessors to refuse the Sacraments to such parents, as thus despise the laws 
of the Church, and disobey the command of both priest and Bishop." 

We may close the testimony of this Rt. Reverend Bishop 
by saying with him that, 

" Parents sin, who in their pride send their children to public schools, 
because they think it is more genteel to associate with Protestants than 
with Catholics. No gentility will compensate for the danger to their 
faith, to which they expose their children. Catholics thus acting have 



I 



S6 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

but little faith, and if, against every warning, they will persevere in thus | 
wantonly and unwarrantedly exposing their children to danger, they will } 
render themselves unworthy of the Sacraments, and they need not wonder / 
if they will be denied them. We cannot serve God and the Devil." ^ / 

The late Bishop Rosecrans, in Lent, 1873, writes thus: 

" Another error of pernicious consequence is that of those who, dis- 
regarding the nature of things, the whole tenor of the Church's teach- 
ings, the repeated and explicit declarations of the Holy Father, Pius IX., 
and the decrees of our own council, persist in declaring that schools in 
which no religion is taught are allowable to Catholic children. Apart 
from the consideration that false religion is taught in these schools by 
innuendo, in text books and teachers' instruction ; that to educate with- 
out inculcating religion is to deny its importance, and by implication its 
truth, the doctrine that Godless schools are good enough for Catholic 
children is explicitly condemned by the authority of the Church. He 
who holds it pertinaciously ceases to be a Catholic as thoroughly as if he 
denied the Real Presence or the Divinity of Jesus Christ. It is no won- 
der we see them joining hands and tongues with bitter anti-Catholics in 
representing the Catholic desire of Catholic education as nothing but the 
instigation of priestly ambition, and the cry of the Catholic conscience 
against the oppression of State schools as the expression of clerical . 
fanaticism. Were they to strip oif the mask and say, * Down with the 
Galilean ! ' their hostility to the Church might be more stingless, but 
it would not be more pointed." 

The sons of the Crusaders are not yet extinct. They live, 
they breathe, they fight, not now for the sepulchre of Christ, 
for the honor of the dead now risen to die no more, but for 
his cradle and that of his Holy Spouse, the Church ; for the 
living sons of God, foully betrayed, robbed and plundered 
of goods and spiritual life by the ruthless of the nineteenth 
century. 

The late Rt. Rev. Dr. Toebbe, Bishop of Covington, 

1 Bishops Gilmour and Spalding edit the National and Young Catholic text- 
books. Messrs. O'Shea and Wm. H. Sadlier deserve similar credit. The excellent 
Murphy Series, Illustrated Catholic Readers, just appearing, bid fair td 
compete with the best. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 8/ 

not unlike Dr. Henni, of Milwaukee, after first giving milk 
and light food to suit weak souls, " in urging the necessity 
and duty of giving Catholic children a truly Christian edu- 
cation," in his pastoral letter of '71, concluded in Lent '72, 
"as the culpable disregard of his admonition by many 
Catholic parents compelled him to return to the subject," 
to speak more plainly and give his children more solid food, 
according to the exigencies of the times. ^^ 

After showing in a few lucid words the only true end of \ 
education, to conduct ' man to the happiness of heaven, the 
Rt. Rev. Pastor thus gives his judgment to his diocesans on 
the secular education of the State schools : 5 

"The Public Schools are infidel and Godless, and must | 
therefore be avoided." I 

This is a volume in a dozen words, which might be left 
thu5. isolated for Christian cogitation without further ex- -, 
planation. But this the Bishop does not disdain to give : 1 

! 

"A show of religion is indeed kept up in them by a reading of the 
Bible ; but this does not and cannot meet the requirements of the chief 
and only end for which man is created. To be convinced of the impo- 
tency for good of such reading, reflect a moment on the sad state of 
religion outside of the Catholic Church, the lamentable ignorance of the 
most sacred duties and responsibilities, the wide-spread skepticism and 
indifference, the consequent disappearance of honesty and integrity, and j 
the fearful increase of irreligion and immorality among all classes of | 
society." | 

Therefore, Catholic parents, to keep your children from 
being enveloped in the general depravity, after avoiding the 
" infidel and Godless Public Schools," for your children, 
according to Bishop Toebbe, "... you must send them,, 
wherever possible, to Catholic schools, where, while the 
mind is becoming developed and stored with secular knowl- 
edge, the heart will be trained in the love and habits of 
virtue. ' ' 

After the Synod held in the Cathedral of Louisville, July 



88 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

21, 1874, we are not at a loss for a distinct and public de- 
claration of the therein presiding Ordinary, Rt. Rev. Wm. 
George McCloskey, D. D. 

In Chap. IX., of the Instruction of Christian youth, 
paragraph III., the Rt. Rev. Bishop, after exhorting all in 
the Lord to leave no effort untried to found Catholic schools 
where they do not at present exist, thus accords with the 
testimony of so many others of our American bishops, with 
regard to the effect of Public School education on Catholics : 
" Sad experience has made it evident, that Catholic youth, 
by the frequentation of the Public Schools, are almost with- 
out exception, exposed to great danger, not only of corrup- 
tion of morals, but also of losing faith itself ' ' 

After this declaration, the same Art. III., in most affecting 
words re-echoes the repeated entreaty, by the bowels of mercy 
of our Lord, that every priest of the diocese would cause rea^ 
Catholic schools to be erected side by side with every par- 
ish church, and closes with the permission to devote a part 
of the revenues of the Church to their necessary support. 
The lengthy pastoral of Dr. McCloskey, of November 21, 

1878, dilating lucidly on the contrast between Public and 
Catholic schools — unfortunately, too long to quote — was 
followed up in 1879 ^7 ^^^ episcopal prohibition to admit 
children to the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Con- 
firmation who had not passed two years, at least, at a Cath- 
olic school. Finally, by the decree of Synod, October 22, 

1879, absolution is to be denied to parents or guardians, 
who presume to send children under nine years old to a 
Public School in a place where there exists a Catholic 
school. The subsequent promulgation of the Roman Docu- 
ment of 1875, which was declared the common rule in future 
for the conduct of his priests throughout the diocese of 
Louisville, decides the matter definitely for Western Ken- 
tucky. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PROVINCE OF CINCINNATI, CONCLUDED RT. REV. BISHOPS 

IN INDIANA. 

The late sainted Bishop St. Palais of Vincennes, Indiana, 
one of the oldest of our venerable American hierarchy, and 
though plain-spoken and bold in the onslaught on infidelity 
and heresy, one of the most amiable and well-beloved of all 
our prelates, speaks from the recent grave, as if yet living. 
His Lenten Pastoral of 1872, he devotes, like Archbishop 
Perche, of New Orleans, almost entire, to the subject of the 
necessity for Catholic parents to avoid sending their children 
to Godless schools. After premising that ^' of late years a 
system of Public and Godless schools has been introduced 
in this country," he goes on to detail how the change came 
about. He then gives his reasons for objecting to the pres- 
ent system : 

\ 
" If you now ask us the reason of our opposition to Public Schools, our 
answer will be plain, frank, and sincere. I. We object to the Public 
Schools on account of the infidel source from which they originated. 
2. We object to those schools because the teaching of religion is ex- 
cluded from them, and such exclusion will inevitably produce religious 
indifference, if not infidelity, 3. We object to these schools, because 
religious instruction, which is necessarily connected with the acquire- 
ment of secular knowledge, cannot be introduced in them without inter- 
fering with the conscientious rights and wounding the most delicate feel- 
ings of the pupils. 4. We object to these schools again because the 
promiscuous assembling of both sexes of a certain age is injurious to the 
morals of the children, and because we dread associations which might, 
in time, prove pernicious to them and distressing to their parents." 

89 



90 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

Surely, objections enough, one would say. Still these are 
not all. But if not all, still enough for the venerable and 
wise Bishop, mild though he be by nature, and tender- 
hearted, to do something terrible with parents, who are so 
wise that they do not consider these considerations suffi- 
cient to move them to do their bounden duty. But before 
we adduce this terrible penalty, let us be allowed to add 
another, and a high spiritual reason for the fatherly St. 
Palais' severity; it is so beautiful and so true : 

" The length and earnestness with which we speak of the religious 
education of your children show you, dearly beloved brethren, that we 
feel deeply concerned in their spiritual welfare. And why should we 
not, since we can say, with truth, that they are our children as well as 
yours ? You generated them, and they were regenerated by our minis- 
trations at the baptismal font, where they were made children of God 
and the heirs of his kingdom. There and then tve assumed the obligation 
of securing for them, by all means in our power, that precious inherit- 
ance. We did so on the strength of the promises which you made to 
God and to us through the sponsors, whom you had selected yourselves, 
and we shall insist on their fulfillment." 

Then listen, O Catholic parents ! hearken to the awful 
sentence even the '' good shepherd " must in duty pass on 
parents neglectful of this most sacred obligation : 

" Those who are acquainted with us, know full well that we are not 
by nature inchnedto severity ; but duty compels us to instruct the pastors 
of our churches to refuse absolution to parents who, having the facilities 
and means of educating their children in a Christian manner, do, from 
worldly motives, expose them to the danger of losing their faith." 

We append the following extracts of the Pastoral letter 
(Jan. 6, 1879) of th^ successor of Bishop St. Palais, Rt. 
Rev. Francis Silas Chatard, D. D. : 

" We next call your attention, dearly beloved brethren, to the subject 
of Catholic school education. It is a matter of vital importance to us 
that our children receive a good Catholic training. Of this we have 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 9 1 

spoken to you before, and shall probably from time to time admonish 
you of your duty in this respect ; and it is our happiness to know that in 
our efforts in the cause of Catholic education we have the blessing of 
our Most Holy Father, Pope Leo XIIL The atmosphere of the Public 
Schools is not one congenial to the Catholic faith ; not because trie 
Catholic Church dislikes learning, for she is foster-mother of science, 
with her hosts of scientific men; but because at best the faith of 
Catholics is ignored in the Public Schools, and because it cannot be ' 
denied that the same watchful care of the morals of the children is not 
had in the Public Schools that is exercised in the Catholic schools ; nor 
are the moral duties taught there as they are with us. To put your 
children in these Public Schools is to expose them to very gi-eat danger, 
and this cannot be excused without very grave and weighty reasons. 
Were you, without such reasons, to send your children to these schools, 
you would sin grievously against charity to your children, and, therefore, 
would not be in a condition to receive the Sacraments, and your con- 
fessor could not absolve you. . . . 

" Nor is the excuse of want of means valid. Our Catholic parish 
schools will receive all who cannot pay. The school must, of course, 
be kept up by the congregation ; but there will always be a sufficient 
number in each congi-egation to support a school, and the children of 
those who cannot pay will be received free of charge. 

"The excuse of inferiority of Catholic schools to the Public Schools 
has little foundation. The instances in which this may be the case are 
comparatively few. In some instances public opinion gives the prefer- 
ence to the Catholic schools ; and in the case of quite a number of 
purely Catholic schools our non-Catholic fellow-citizens show their con- 
fidence in us by placing their children in them. Notwithstanding the 
short space of time we have been in the diocese we have the persuasion, 
amounting almost to conviction, that ordinarily the Catholic parish 
school gives as good a secular education as the ward school, while 
higher and more important ethical knowledge regarding God, our rela- 
tions to Him and to our neighbor, imparted in the Catholic school, gives 
it an immeasurable advantage over those schools in which it is thought 
best to say as little as possible about God and our duties to Him. ..." 

The Lent of 1879 ^^^ called forth this judgment of the 
Rt. Rev. Jos. Dwenger, of Fort Wayne. 

" Our Public Schools, although generally good in worldly branches, 
are devoid of religion, and only too often, in their teachers, teaching, 



92 THE JUDGES OF FAITH! 

text-books and associations, highly inimical to the Catholic Church. 
They do not suffice for our Catholic children ; with us, religious instruc- 
tion is of paramount importance. We do not desire to interfere with 
non-Catholics — they may have their Public Schools; we only regret 
iflat they are so poor that they cannot support them without taxing the 
Catholics." 

To conclude our testimonies from the Province of Cin- 
cinnati, our readers may be glad to hear of a new help in 
the direction of raising, where necessary, our parochial 
schools to a standard equal and superior to that of the 
public system. Here is Bishop Dwenger's proposal : 

" We are well aware that the support of good parochial schools is a 
great burden, but the faith of posterity depends upon them. We know 
many things are yet to be desired, but when we see the great efforts that 
are made to raise the Public Schools to a standard of perfection, should 
we Catholics do less, or show less zeal for our schools ? Decidedly no. 
In order to assist and encourage Catholic education in our diocese we 
have come to the conclusion to establish a diocesan school board, whose 
functions it will be I . To collect reports and statistics from all parochial 
and select schools, and from academies that give tuition to day scholars. 
The reports should be collected during the month of July. 2. As soon 
after that as convenient, and no later than the first of September, the 
members of said board shall meet, discuss the report, reduce them to a 
general report which they shall make to the Bishop, adding such sugges- 
tions as they may deem proper. They may meet more frequently during 
the year, as the president or a majority of the board may think advisable. 
As such committee we appoint Very Rev. J. Benoit, V. G., Revs. Corby, 
O'Reilly, Koenig, Rademacher, Meisner, and John Oechtering." 

All honor to the two dioceses of Indiana ! Their 165,000 
Catholics living in one of the poorer portions of the north- 
eastern Mississippi Valley under the pastorate of the apos- 
tolic Brute and Hailandiere, gentle De St. Palais and 
vigorous Chatard and Dwenger, have erected schools along- 
side every church until they equal half as many as those of 
the great Empire State with nine times as many Catholics. 
Vincennes alone, in 1883, counted as many schools of all 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 93 

grades as the seven dioceses of all New England. Modest 
Fort Wayne is the only diocese which by its school-board 
organization and gradation has long anticipated the exact 
provisions of the Pontiff Leo, in the system devised under 
the enlightened counsel of the Commission of Roman Car- 
dinals and American Archbishops, for the parochial schools 
of the land. The only other diocese known to have a School 
Board prior to the execution of the Plenary Council de- 
crees, given in detail in our concluding chapters, is that of 
Buffalo, New York. 

Educational Summary. — In the nine dioceses of the 
Province of Cincinnati, comprising Ohio, Indiana, Lower 
Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, there are 650 parochial, 
780 total schools, with 144,000 pupils. This count propor- 
tionately and absolutely outstrips that of any Church 
Province in the Union. These and like figures are com- 
piled from Directories of 1883 and 1885. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ARCHBISHOP PERCHE, OF NEW ORLEANS BISHOPS .OF NATCHI- 
TOCHES, LOUISIANA; NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI; MOBILE, 
ALABAMA ; GALVESTON, TEXAS ; LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS ; 
RT. REV. FRANCIS JANSSENS. 

When the minister of a certain Greek Arian Emperor 
harshly reproached St. Basil and demanded how he had 
dared disobey his orders by teaching the Catholic faith, the 
holy Bishop quietly remarked: ''Perhaps you have yet to 
find out what a Christimi Bishop is." So now, non-Catho- 
lics, perhaps, are astonished that our Bishops are so bold in 
denouncing the Public State Schools. It might be answered 
them that have they yet to learn what a Bishop is. 

The late Archbishop Perche in his Lenten Pastoral of 
1872, treats the subject of Catholic education for Catholics, 
and condemns the public school in its system and practice 
in the most hardy terms. After speaking of the distinction 
between simple instruction and real education, he thus con- 
tinues : 

" In a word, for Catholics who understand their duty as such, the 
question of education is paramount to every other consideration, and 
must be essentially and eminently Catholic, if it will not be defrauded 
of its noble ends." 

Then, after exhorting to Catholic education, and pointing 
out its means, he addresses the public schoolism in the 
following terms : 

" Our public school system, as organized in this State, is emphatically 
a social plague. It is no system of education at all, but the simple and 

94 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 95 

direct negation of such, since it excludes all creeds, without which 
education, as we have defined it, is impossible. The public school 
system is not imperfect only, it is also vicious ; not only defective, but 
radically mischievous ; its effects on religion are most disastrous, and are 
equally baneful to society, which, like all other human institutions, has 
no ground to stand on outside of religion." 

It is of no use to contend there is any safety in the system 
ignoring all sectarianism, as it is called. For a system of 
pretended education, from which every religious creed is 
excluded, must be of course irreligious, and any system pro- 
fessedly irreligious, must become anti-religious. 

He next stigmatizes the whole system : ist. As intolerant, 
allowing not only "no religious instruction," but even 
forcing poor parents either to leave children uninstructed or 
send them where their conscience will not permit them to 
let their children go. 2d. It is called legal ; but legality 
and injustice are often yoke-mates in these days. 3d. As 
radically iniquitous. 4th. As degrading to the teacher who 
is forced to hide his own belief. But if these be the defects 
of the system itself, what shall the good and learned Arch- 
bishop have to say of its moral effects ? 

" The radical vice of thos^ schools consists in this (and here is a mat- 
ter upon which we lay particular stress, as it is one which appeals directly 
to every good citizen), that they are utterly unprepared to furnish the 
child with any moral principle. To this point we would invite your 
most particular attention, 

" Now we ask you, beloved brethren, what prospect is opened for 
religion and society by a generation trained under the anti-religious, anti- 
social and immoral system that we have described ? Alas ! the past 
supplies us with the key to the future. Your very blood would curdle 
in your veins at the bare recital by journalists far from hostile to the pub- 
lic schools, of the scandals of which they are the scene. Even the 
warmest sticklers for the nefarious system, as they depict the immorality 
with which our large cities are flooded, and the fetid tide of which is 
fast overflowing into the rural districts, are constrained by the very force 
of truth and the evidence of facts to ascribe the principal cause of all 



96 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

his shame to the absence of every sort of rehgious belief and moral 
teaching from our Public Schools. 

" It is therefore a duty, beloved brethren, incumbent on all Catholics 
to unite their efforts and employ every legitimate means to arrest the 
fearful progress of irreligion and immorality, and ward off the dangers 
with which Society is menaced ; and, at the same time, all ought to co- 
operate for the establishment of Catholic schools in their respective par- 
ishes, since therein lies the surest and most effectual antidote for the evils 
which/ we signalize." 

It is only natural that a stanch upholder of Catholic doc- 
trine and practice on the subject of educating God's little 
ones, like Archbishop Perche, should infuse into his suifra- 
gans some of his own spirit. Consequently, we find him 
in union with the Rt. Rev. Bishops of Natchitoches, 
Natchez, Mobile, Galveston, and Little Rock, in their 
Conciliar Letter of January 19th, 1873, reverting in strong 
terms to the subject of Catholic education in distinction 
from any other whatsoever :. 

"This education must be given simultaneously in the family, in the 
church, and in the school. Unless all three of these fountains contrib- 
ute their share of knowledge and virtue to the soul, the education will 
be incomplete. And if any one of these three be irreligious or indiffer- 
ent, the education will almost certainly be poisonous to the soul. It is 
not enough, then, to instill good principles into your children's minds at 
home and send them to receive religious instructions from their Pastors 
at church ; these same principles must be supported by similar ones, 
inculcated at school, and made practical by their application in the disci- 
pline of the school. Unhappily, the number of our Catholic schools is far 
from corresponding with the wants of our numerous population. We call 
on you to help us in multiplying them. They ate needed for the saving 
of your children; and you must not forget the solemn declaration of St. 
Paul: If any one have not care . . . especially of those of his household^ 
he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.^'' I Tim. V. 

RT. REV. FRANCIS JANSSENS. 

In a private letter to the compiler bearing date October 
5, 1,881, Rt. Rev. Francis Janssens, successor of Bishop 
Elder in the see of Natchez, writes : 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. Q/ 

" I have purposely avoided saying much against the Public School 
system. Our Catholics are very willing to listen to their pastors and to 
send their children to our schools, so there is no use of embittering the 
minds of others for no purpose. All I said in the sermon (at Vicksburg, 
Miss.) was : ' that since religion, the training of the soul in faith and 
virtue was paramount in a Christian, and the great thing necessary ; and 
since public schools were bound by constitution to leave out religion and 
teach science without inculcating God, His doctrines. His commands ; 
hence the Public School system should be looked upon by every Chris- 
tian not only as insufficient, but as positively dangerous, promoting of 
its very nature mdifferentism, if not infidelity.' ..." 

To account for the vast multiplication of Catholic schools 
in the Ohio Valley and the States south, and give a special 
reason for the proportionately vigorous denunciation of the 
practical effects of the Public School system south of the 
Mason and Dixon line, we have only to consider these facts 
from a late authority in the " Catholic World," April, 1885 : 

" For a Catholic child, black or white, to go to a public or private non- 
Catholic school in the Southern States is going to be far more dangerous 
to his religion than in the North ; for the Southern Protestants are much 
more bigoted and enormously more numerous in proportion than their 
Northern brethren. There is no place in America where the dread and 
hatred of Catholicity is so intense as in the States where the negroes 
live. Calumnies stale for twenty-five years in the North are current in 
the South. You often find Maria Monk's Revelations beside the Bible. 
There are populous counties in every Southern State, except the border 
ones and Louisiana, where there is not the faintest resemblance to a 
Catholic congregation ; localities where a Catholic priest was never seen ; 
and vast and powerful States, like North Carolina, where the Catholics 
are less in number than the smallest congregation of the city of New 
York. It is easy to see, then, that a neutral school, if such a thing 
could be possible anywhere, is not possible South. Every uncatholic 
school there will be strictly and squarely anti-Catholic." 

Educational Summary. — The province of New Orleans, 
composed of eight dioceses, embracing Louisiana, Missis- 
sippi, Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas, with a Catholic popu- 
lation of over 440,000, has 153 parochial, 277 total schools, 
23,700 pupils. 
7 



CHAPTER XXI. 

PROVINCE OF SAN FRANCISCO MOST REV. S. ALEMANY, LATE 

ARCHBISHOP OF THE GOLDEN STATE SUFFRAGANS OF 

MONTEREY, AND OF GRASS VALLEY ARCHBISHOPS HEISS 

AND HENNI BISHOP VERTIN, OF MARQUETTE, OF THE 

PROVINCE OF MILWAUKEE. 

Passing through the Ohio Valley and the Gulf States we 
arrive at California on the Pacific, where the Provincial 
Council of San Francisco was held. May 3d, 1874. The 
decrees of this assembly of Judges of the Faith were 
signed by 

*f* Joseph Sadoc, O. P., Archbishop of San Francisco. 

^ Thaddeus, C. M., Bishop of Monterey and Los An- 
geles. 

*f* Eugene, Bishop of Grass Valley. 

if< Francis, Bishop-Coadjutor of Monterey and Los An- 
geles. 

The chapters on education conclude in these words : 

" From the foregoing you will readily perceive, dearly beloved, the 
necessity incumbent upon you of providing for the Christian education 
of your children, in order to secure to them the possession of that price- 
less jewel, divine faith, whereby they can attain to hfe everlasting. And 
if it be a duty in countries, where all or nearly all profess the true faith, 
to attend sedulously to the early instruction of youth, it becomes doubly 
so here, where, in consequence of the educational system pursued by the 
government, the faith and morality of our children are constantly ex- 
posed to the greatest peril." 

Educational Summary. — The Province of San Fran- 
cisco, of three dioceses, extending over California, Nevada 
98 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 99 

and Utah, counts nearly 237,000 Catholics, supplied with 
82 parochial schools, 131 schools of all grades, with 15,300 
white and Indian pupils. 

We find the grand Lake Regions of our northern bound- 
ary resounding with the like sentiments, voiced by 



MOST REV. M. HEISS, ARCHBISHOP OF MILWAUKEE. 

There is something peculiarly touching in the pastoral 
plaint of this Prelate, when as Bishop of Lacrosse, Wis- 
consin, he contemplates the deplorable state of educational 
affairs in his diocese: ''We grieve," he writes, ''in our 
inmost heart when we look on the children growing up in 
our diocese ! — for, far the greater number of them are either 
without any school, or go to the Public Schools, where so 
many of them imbibe in their tender souls the poisonous 
germs of infidelity and immorality." 

Praying meanwhile fervently: "O! that all parents 
would put before their eyes the tremendous account which 
they have once to give for their children, and thus learn to 
understand in time, before it will be too late, what they owe 
to them." 

From the pen of the late 

MOST REV. DR. HENNI, 

Bishop, and first Archbishop of the same See, we have two 
pastorals touching our subject ; one of 1872 and the other 
of 1874: the last stronger in its expression than the first. 
Any one can understand the delicacy of some, especially a 
few years back, hesitating, for prudential reasons, to press 
the obligation under conscience and pain of the deprivation 
of the sacraments, on the subject of Catholic children at- 
tending Catholic schools only. In his Pastoral for Lent, in 
the year 1872, Bishop Henni says: 



lOO THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

" We live in evil days — in the midst of irreligious and infidel scoffers, 
or false brethren, who, even under a Christian name, are perpetually 
undermining the Gospel-truth of Christ, and promoting the kingdom of 
Satan. . . . Indeed, a close inspection of the w^orkings of schools, in 
vi^hich the children cannot be instructed in their religion, reveals a state 
of things to which only careless and infatuated parents can be strangers. 
The blessings of religion need to be shed on both branches of education 
— that of the mind and that of the heart; for its saving influence can alone 
make them productive of good, and counteract successfully the morbid 
workings of nature. Every congi-egation, therefore, is in duty bound — a 
duty its members oive both to God and society — to have its ov^n parish school 
established ; because the attendance at Public Schools generally results 
in the ruin of the tender soul. Hence, let parents be aware of their 
great responsibilities, as they have to give an account to the Eternal 
Judge of the education of their dear offspring." 

Note in the italicized words a proof of what we said a 
while ago, that Catholics are in duty bound, if at all in their 
power, under pain of sin, to establish Catholic schools 
where they do not exist. 

In his Lenten Pastoral, 1874, the Rt. Rev. Bishop comes 
out more plainly, and re-echoes from the far north the exact 
words of Archbishop Purcell. 

THE RT. REV. JOHN VERTIN, 

of Marquette, Michigan, in a letter to the compiler puts the 
whole question in a petition added to the Litany : '' From 
schools without religion — schools, which necessarily lead 
to all social and religious disorders, deliver us, O Lord ! ' ' 
Over and over again the same story, sad and ever more sad, 
of the public schools being the cause of loss of faith and all 
morality. And Bishops on Bishops, with Archbishops, with 
provincial, general councils, nay, the very Supreme Head 
of the Church, inculcate this truth in most clear and unmis- 
takable tones ; and still some Catholic parents will blind 
themselves to their obligation and think they know better 
than the whole Church. Verily, it would seem to be time 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. lOI 

for concerted action among Catholics, that they may finally 
understand they cannot approach the Sacraments unless they 
send their children to Catholic schools where they have 
them ; and cannot remain without sin, if they do not pro- 
cure themselves the means to the end to which they are 
bound, viz., Catholic schools, in which to raise their chil- 
dren as Catholics. The line is drawn, and pastors cry to 
their flocks : Are you Catholics ? Come over to me and 
send your children to Catholic schools. Are you not 
Catholics ? Then go away about your business ; we want 
no such black, scabby sheep to infest the flock of Christ. 
''I am the good shepherd, I know mine and mine know 
me." . . . ^' And the sheep follow him because they 
know his voice. ' ' 

Educational Summary. — The five dioceses and two 
vicariates of the Province of Milwaukee, included in Wiscon- 
sin, Minnesota, North Michigan and Dakota, have 288 
parochial, 361 total schools, 42,400 scholars. 



CHAPTER XXIL 

PROVINCES OF ST. LOUIS, CHICAGO, SANTA FE. 

The Second Provincial Council of St. Louis, celebrated 
September 12th, 1858, issued a joint pastoral signed by the 
present archbishops of St. Louis and Santa Fe,^ Most Rev. 
P. R. Kenrick and Dr. John Lamy, by the then suffragan 
bishops, Rt. Revs. R. P. Miles of Nashville, Dr. Henni of 
Milwaukee, J. B. Miegs, S. J., Vic. Apostolic of Kansas, 
H. D. Juncker of Alton, Clement Smyth of Dubuque, and 
the afflicted Dr. James Duggan, Administrator of Chicago. 
It was subscribed, finally, by the venerable father of Catho- 
licity in Minnesota and the adjoining territories. Very Rev. 
Aug. Ravoux, as Administrator of St. Paul, Minnesota — yet 
surviving as vicar general, in a green old age, of the more* 
venerable Bishop Grace, and his successor. Dr. Ireland. 

Premising the oft-repeated general explication of what 
real education is, the pastoral implores parents to let their 
children "attend schools where the principles of our holy 
faith are recognized as the first principles of all knowledge, 
and are valued immeasurably above all human discoveries 
and all earthly science ; ' ' and punctures the State secular 
schools in these words: '^We cannot caution you too 
strongly against those schools where divine faith is either 
openly traduced or silently ignored, or where secular learn- 
ing is placed above the divine." The 'dangerous com- 
pany" of these State schools — dangerous to "infant faith 
and tender courage," so "sensitive to the shafts of ridicule" 

1 These now quite aged metropolitans stood sponsors also for the decrees of the 
two great Plenary Councils of 1866 and 1885. 
102 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. IO3 

— ris pointedly signalized. Catholic schools in the "respect- 
ive parishes " are strenuously recommended. 

RT. REV. JOHN JAMES HOGAN. 

An extensive Latin brochure of some forty pages, a copy 
of which, accompanied by a condescending letter from Rt. 
Rev. John James Hogan, has been forwarded to us, is de- 
voted to the Acts of the Diocesan Synod, and Statutes of 
the Diocese of St. Joseph's, Missouri, with an Appendix of 
Roman Documents, on various heads. Statute 12, sine 
ambagibus declares " that the sacraments are to be refused 
to Catholics unworthy the name, who, ... in the educa- 
tion of their children, caring nothing for Catholic schools, 
patronize the secular (Public) schools. ' ' (Scholis saeculari- 
bus, posthabitis scholis Catholicis, patrocinantes.) This is 
followed up in No. 22 by the reasons for this sharp regulation, 
and the laying down, in the words of the Roman Rescript 
on Public Schools, of 1875, of ^'^^ ^^^7 of the rich and legis- 
lators, parents and pastors : " It is very evident that Catholic 
parents cannot conscientiously send their children to Public 
Schools, because such schools, deprived of the guidance of 
Church authority, neither teach the doctrine of religion or 
the rudiments of faith, nor enforce a strict code of morals. ' ' 

Wherefore the consciences, especially of pastors and par^- 
ents, the wealthy and influential, are burdened with the duty 
of establishing Christian schools, " lest by the sowing of 
seeds of infidelity and impiety, in place of those of faith and 
virtue, religion and good morals be expelled from our midst, 
to the complete ruin and disaster of not only single citizens 
and families, but also of civil society and the State itself. ' ' 

RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING, BISHOP OF PEORIA. 

In the magnificent pageant witnessed in the Old Cathe- 
dral of St. Patrick, in the Metropolitan City of the United 
States, on a bright May morning in the year 1877, His 



I04 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

Eminence, Cardinal McCloskey, figured as the august Cpn- 
secrator of Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding. That the illustrious 
occupant of this late established See — Peoria — is fully 
abreast with his senior brethren in his radical condemna- 
tion of our Public School system, is luminously apparent 
from his positive declarations in two of his published 
works ; ^ and, negatively, from his well-known labors in 
editing an almost complete series of Catholic text-books for 
Catholic schools. Illustrating Archbishop Martin John 
Spalding's views "on this, socially and religiously, the 
most important question of our day" (''Life," Chap. 
XVI.) Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, not only cordially indorses 
his Most Rev. relative's arguments, as against the Common 
School system by law established in these parts, but adds, 
among others, the following pungent animadversions : 

"... The exclusion of religious instruction from the school-room 
can be logically justified only on the assumption that religion is false. 
. . . The Godless school theory, . . . can have its logical basis only in 
that system of sophistry which holds that all positive religious dogmas 
had their origin in the credulity, the ignorance and fears, of rude and 
savage peoples. Were this true, the diffusion of the spirit of unbelief 
would be most desirable ; and for the accomplishment of this end no 
better means could be found than the Godless school system." And all 
this is applicable to " the common-school system as it exists in this 
country." 

In the next paragraph we hear that " the undenomina- 
tional system of schools which we have here is precisely that 
which the infidel party in Europe is using every exertion 
to introduce there, because it perceives how fatal it must 
prove to religion." 

No wonder, then (''Essays" III., part II.), that "reli- 
gion — the one indispensable element in any right system of 
national education — ought to constitute the very essence of 
all primary education." 

1 " Life of Archb. Spalding," " Essays and Reviews," by Rt. Rev. J. L. Spald- 
ing, D. D., Bp. of Peoria : Cath. Pub. Sec. Co., New York. 1873-1877. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOI^. IO5 

The Bishop of Peoria's labors in the cause of lifting 
Catholic youth out of the dangers that beset them in secular 
schools, and out of the ruts of improper methods, and want 
of system and gradation in our own popular schools, extend 
not only to primary and intermediate instruction, but prin- 
cipally tend of later years, to the foundation in our midst 
of the nucleus of a future great Catholic University.^ 

But, leaving for a moment religion aside, of what account 
is even the secular education pretended to be given in our 
primary or grammar schools? . . . 

" These ignorant masses, who, in the Common Schools, have been 
through the Fourth Reader, . . . know nothing, not even their own 
ignorance . . . Take the first boy whom you meet, fourteen or fifteen 
years old, fresh from the Common School, and his ignorance of all real 
knowledge will surprise you. What he knows is little, and of small 
value. . . . The educational "quacks" — and it is not doubtful who 
they are — " treat the child as though he were mere mind, and his sole 
business to use it, and chiefly for low ends, shrewdly and sharply with a 
view to profit ; as though life were a thing of barter, and wisdom the 
art of making the most of it." 

Secular education is not only an abuse of words : it is a 
contradiction in terms. If it can be forced into any mean- 
ing, it is this : As there is by excess edification to destruc- 
tion, there is also by defect education to damnation. 

Aye, by all that is true, " poor child ! how they dwarf thy being . . . 
flatten all thy soaring thoughts. . . . Poor child ! . . . how they stun 
thy poetical soul . . . with their cold teaching that man lives on bread 
alone. ^ . . And when thou wouldst look back with awe and reverence 
to the sacred ages past, to the heroes, sages, saints of the olden times, 
they come with their gabble and tell thee there were no railroads and 
Common schools in those days." 

As Most Rev. Dr. Feehan, of Chicago, subscribed the 
Decrees of the Second and Third Plenary Councils of 
Baltimore, we finish this province with 

1 Vide chapter on our Catholic American University. 



I06 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

RT. REV. P. J. BALTES. 

Under the heading '' Unchristian or Infidel Schools," the 
late Rt. Rev. P. J. Baltes, of Alton, in his Pastoral for Lent, 
1870 (remitted to the compiler from the Bishop's own hands), 
insists at length on the necessity of calling our Public Schools 
infidel, "seminaries of infidelity, and as such most fruitful 
sources of immorality. ' ' By their means the State is infi- 
delizing the Nation, "by sapping the very foundations of 
society, . . . impeding the progress of religion, encour- 
aging immorality, and advancing materialism." By all 
laws, human and divine, education belongs to parents, the 
learned Bishop argues, and the State tyrannizes when it 
snatches children from the domestic hearth and practically 
compels attendance on its Public Schools, "which as now 
worked in this country, must sooner or later make of this 
an infidel nation." The inevitable conclusion forces itself 
that, in accordance with decree 437, cited from the Second 
Plenary Council, " laymen who will unreasonably oppose 
your (the pastors') exertions in this laudable and necessary 
work (of maintaining Catholic schools) shall be excluded 
from the sacraments." 

EDUCATIONAL SUMMARY. 







Par. Schools. 


Total Schools. 


Total Scholars. 


inc 


e of St. Louis, . 


. . . 297 


388 


46,400 


<( 


" Chicago, . 


... 265 


323 


48,540 


« 


« Santa Fe, . 


... 61 


81 


5A50 



The archdiocese of St. Louis and its five suffragan Sees, 
extend over Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa. That of 
Chicago, with two suffragans, includes Illinois. Santa Fe, 
with two other Sees, has jurisdiction in New Mexico (one 
county excepted), Colorado and Arizona. We here begin 
to count separate schools for eadi sex with two hundred 
pupils or over in the aggregate, as individual parish schools. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE PROVINCES OF PHILADELPHIA AND OREGON CITY. 

Although the Bishops of the Diocese of Philadelphia, 
and afterwards, its Archbishops, render their testimony by 
the general decisions of the Councils of Baltimore, in the 
persons of Archbishops Wood, Kenrick, Ryan and others, 
we may make room for a surviving representative of the 
province of the Penn State. 

We find Bishop Tobias Mullen, of Erie, as late as the 
Lent of 1879, giving utterance to the following, unmistakably 
referring to the evils of educating anywhere but in Catholic 
schools : 

"... The duties incumbent on fathers and mothers as such are 
pregnant with the most important results to all concerned ; and we but 
re-echo the teaching of revelation and reason, when we say that those 
duties, whatever their nature or however wide their range, are not ful- 
filled, whatever else is done, unless children are provided by their 
parents with a Christian education. For, let people say what they 
please, there is no other kind of education that will enable children, 
after they have reached the age of maturity, to do their whole duty to 
their neighbors as well as themselves ; to the Church as well as to the 
State. Just as there is no other, in which, while this world is attended 
to, the next is not forgotten. Catholic parents, as long as they live, 
voluntarily and cheerfully remain under the training, guidance, and 
instruction of the Church ; then why should their children, when it is 
possible to avoid it, be placed under different influences — influences so 
insidious in their operations, so fatal in their results, that it is only after 
the curriculum of studies has been completed, the parent discovers his 
son or daughter has become a confirmed infidel, or at best but a nominal 
Catholic ! " 

107 



I08 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

What is meant here but the influences of the pubhc 
schools ? Then, what is to be said of those who can, and 
will not, assist in establishing Catholic schools, everywhere, 
if possible, and the number of children permit ? 

"This duty may be violated by refusing to assist in the organization 
of a Catholic school, or, what is worse, by persisting in sending children 
to other than a Catholic school when such a school is within reach. . . . 
Many congregations endeavor to excuse their lukewarmness in this matter 
by alleging they are too small and too poor to incur the expense incidental 
to the support of a parochial school. Such may be the case in some in- 
stances ; but it requires no very large or wealthy congregation to succeed 
in such an undertaking. What is principally needed in most congrega- 
tions, still without a parochial school, is a fair share of zeal and good will. 
When these are at hand. Christian education, cost what it may, is always 
provided for the children of the congregation as a matter of course." 

And poor congregations, look how easy it is to do when 
we will: 

"... Among the annual reports this year forwarded to us from the 
different missions, the last to reach us comes from one of the most un- 
important congregations in the diocese, numerically and financially. It 
is made up principally of workingmen, with a few farmers. The priest 
says, in his report, that the number of Catholic families belonging to the 
Church is about fifty. Yet that congregation some four or five years ago 
started a Catholic school, and has supported it ever since. The average 
attendance at the school, as reported, is 105 pupils, who are under the 
care of two teachers, the most competent to be found in the whole 
county, and devoted above all other teachers to their duties in school ; 
for they teach not because they can find nothing that will pay better, but 
because in that profession they find the amplest opportunity of doing 
good to others and advancing God's glory. We have in this case an 
illustration of what can be done by a little zeal and self-denial, and we 
now point to it as an example which we would wish to see followed 
throughout the diocese." 

SECOND PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF OREGON. 

The following pithy justification of all the points of our 
thesis has been kindly furnished by Rt. Rev. Aegidius Jun- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. IO9 

ger, D. D., Bishop of Nesqually, one of the participants in 
the late Provincial Council of Oregon, second in order of 
time, of the province, and convoked, October 5 th, 1881. 
His Grace, Archbishop Seghers and Rt. Rev. Suffragans, of 
Nesqually and Vancouver's Island, say : 

" We address ourselves not only to parents, but also to all our faithful, 
whether they have children or not, and we declare it before God that 
you are all in duty bound to aid and assist us, with word and example, 
with prayer and money, to establish Catholic schools, where the rising 
generation may be preserved from the contamination of the depravity of 
our age. The wickedness of the present Public School system consists 
in the exclusion of religious principle, of the worship of God, of the 
teaching of Christianity ; it consists in the selection of bad and perni- 
cious school books ; it consists in the carelessness of teachers with 
regard to the language of their pupils — swearing, cursing and profane 
expressions being a distinctive mark of Public School children ; it con- 
sists in an unpardonable lack of watchfulness over the moral conduct of 
children — boys and girls being allowed an intercourse which, to any one 
who understands human nature and human passions, is fraught with the 
most imminent danger. Yes, we say it without hesitation, the Public 
Schools as they now exist, will prove the ruin of the religion and mor- 
ality of our children ; we must, therefore, endeavor to preserve the latter 
from the poisoned atmosphere of these Godless institutions. Catholic 
schools we must have, Catholic schools we will have ; and if (which God 
forbid !) we ever failed to attain this object, for want of support on your 
part, your responsibility before God would be heavy in the extreme. 
We declare and we warn Catholic parents, that in places where Catholic 
schools exist, they are in duty bound and obliged in conscience to with- 
draw their children from the Public Schools and to send them to the 
schools placed under the patronage of the Church." 

One of the Suffragans of Oregon, who in Lent, 1884, 
yet signs himself Bishop of Vancouver's Island, though in 
immediate charge of the See of Helena, Montana Territory, 
adds to the above : 

"... Now the question is, whether the Public Schools here called 
unsectarian are opposed to the CathoHc Church. Let us, beloved brethren, 



no THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

not be deceived by words, but let us look at the Public Schools and see 
what they are. 

" No religion can be taught therein ; no prayers said ; no command- 
ment of God inculcated. The teacher may be Christian or infidel, moral 
or immoral, and in consequence the children's character will be regu- 
lated by the character of the master. All children having a right to go 
to these schools, innocent children run great danger of demoralization 
by bad associates ; neither can the mixing of sexes lead to good morals. 
The books in use must be uncertain, which means uncatholic or anti- 
Catholic. What are the duties of Catholics under the circumstances in 
order that their children may not suffer the loss of faith or morals ? Chris- 
tians should combine efforts so that Christian schools may obtain as much 
legal rights as the irreligious. Wherever they are able, Catholics are 
bound to erect good Catholic schools. Where there are no Catholic 
schools, those who are able to do so should send their children to 
Catholic boarding schools or instruct them at home. If this be impos- 
sible, they can send their children to an unsectarian school, provided the 
teacher be moral, and the associates be above reproach, the parents in- 
struct their children in religion by themselves or by others, and that they 
watch the book used, the lessons taught and the company their children 
keep, so as to remedy the evils detected by advice, instruction or punish- 
ment. ..." 

EDUCATIONAL SUMMARY. 

Dioceses. Par. Schools. Total Schools. Total Pupils. 
Province of Philadelphia . 5 286 464 61,000 

" " Oregon City .4 21 53 2,350 

The Province of Philadelphia is bounded by the State of 
Pennsylvania ; that of Oregon includes, in our boundaries, 
the State of Oregon, Washington and Idaho Territories. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON AND THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 

As the New England dioceses give their combined testi- 
mony in the next chapter, with the province of New York to 
which prior to 1875 ^^ey belonged, our present business is 
chiefly with the archdiocese of Boston, created at that date 
and in general the region once under its sway. A marvel- 
ous development of Catholic sentiment against public, 
and in favor of parochial and other exclusive schools, has 
been witnessed in the New England sections since the past 
five years, particularly in Massachusetts. The prelates 
of this region, following the traditions of the old province 
of New York and its prudent, statesmanlike Archbishop, 
John Hughes, of glorious memory, have tolerated the Public 
Schools for the use of Catholic children, in default of 
others, as long as was at all consistent with the rules of 
moral theology and the dictations of the Holy See. It was 
thought, at one time, that the powerful minority of Catholics 
in New York State and the cities of New York, Brooklyn 
and Jersey City, could force public opinion to respect 
Catholic rights in the State schools, and stay the torrent of 
indifferentism that was then threatening to overwhelm the 
child population. Deceitful promises were held out and the 
circumstances seemed to bid fair in keeping aloof, at least, 
the proximate dangers pressing Catholic youth. But in vain. 
The dauntless Hughes saw himself betrayed, and after a man- 
ful struggle, was constrained to acknowledge that no com- 
promise with the neutral and religionless schools by law es- 
tablished was to be admitted, except under unavailing protest. 

Ill 



112 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

The State, proud of its triumph, fastened the systematic 
yoke the more tightly about the necks of the people ; and ob- 
tained such prestige it lorded it over the Catholic elements 
to the effect that the Prelates were crippled in their efforts 
to afford facilities to Catholic children for twenty-five or 
thirty years. Indeed, the maiming process of so long ago 
has not lost all its disasti'ous results in several localities and 
dioceses even to this day. It is of record that the triple 
cities about Manhattan Island contain many thousands of 
Catholic boys and girls unprovided with fit schools, or often 
with none. 

But the ecclesiastical authorities have worked prodigies in 
essaying the almost hopeless task of building churches and 
schools for the continually inpouring floods of immigrants 
from twenty foreign ports. The doctrine of the Church is 
simply the same East and West on educational as on other 
matters, and, doubtless, circumstances mostly have caused 
the dearth of Catholic schools further north, in the home 
of the Puritan. But things are being revolutionized with 
the rapidity characteristic of America, and especially where 
the son of the stirring Celt and his religion are concerned. 
One needs only to glance at the astounding change that has 
come over the face of New England since the time of the 
great Bishop, afterwards French Cardinal, Cheverus and his 
immediate successor, and even in the last half decade, in 
order to understand the power of the faith. 

It is notorious among the old stock of English descend- 
ants, that New England is fast becoming New Ireland, and 
the land of the Cotton Mathers and Eliots is transforming 
into the inheritance of the martyred Rasles, Jogues, and 
their children, the meek sons of the Church. Schools are 
bound to follow their counterparts, the congregations of the 
faithful. In face of the hard fact that modern State schools 
are more and more turned into manufactories of Godless 
generations of youths of both sexes, the progress of Catholic 



. CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. II 3 

school building is inevitable. The propagandism of the 
sects and particularly that of non-religionists, is no longer 
to be suffered. 

It is not very wonderful, then, to hear in the late case of 
Rev. Fr. Scully, at Cambridgeport, in the suburbs of Bos- 
ton, Massachusetts, who dared follow the teaching of the 
Church and refuse absolution to parents rebelling against 
their pastor in the matter of sending children to certain 
Public Schools, that upon a committee's report who waited 
on Most Rev. Archbishop Williams, the pastor was simply 
sustained in his action, and the rebels were let to under- 
stand that their Bishop considered himself insulted by the 
bare suspicion that they would find any support from him 
as favorable to Public Schools.^ 

Though it was thought by those more conservative that 
the time had hardly arrived for anything like a general 
reversal of former toleration of even the best Common 
schools for Catholic uses, it was not long until there were 
discovered many more practical supporters of the change 
than was at all suspicioned — thanks, perhaps, to certain 
Roman hints. 

Soon after the Cambrideport commotion, his Grace, the 
Archbishop of Boston, convoked a conference of the clergy, 
of the Pastoral Address in which the Boston Pilot (Decem- 
ber, 1879), ^fter adducing it, says: 

^' The Archbishop has seen the above statement, and finds 
that it fairly indicates the purport of his Address to the clergy 
lately assembled at a Theological Conference in Boston." 

The therefore official statement, after introductory words, 
is to this effect : 

" The Archbishop, moved by the public interest in the school question, 
recalled to the minds of the clergy the principles of Catholic theology 
that relate to the Christian education of the young, and in view of our 

1 Rev. Father Scully, on being applied to, indorses this account as correct, 

8 



114 THE JIUDGES OF FAITH ! 

embarrassing circumstances, the difficulties of the matter and recent 
events, exhorted them to use the utmost prudence and chanty in the 
appHcation of these principles. The principles themselves are those of 
the divine moral law and depend for their validity and binding force, not 
merely on ecclesiastical definitions, but on their own intrinsic truth and 
justice. On these principles, all true Catholics are agreed. . . . 

" The Archbishop strongly urged that, whenever practicable, such schools 
shotild be established in every parish, and, as far as possible, made equal 
to the public schools. They are regarded as practicable where their 
establishment and support would not create any serious financial embar- 
rassment, or impose too grievous a burden on the resources of the faith- 
ful. As, in the absence of suitable Catholic schools, parents send their 
children to the public schools rather than allow them to grow up illiter- 
ate, they should make it a matter of conscience to take due precautions 
against the dangers of such schools, and attend diligently to the instruc- 
tion of the children in Christian doctrine, out of school hours. In this 
connection the Archbishop read from the instructions sent to the Bish- 
ops of the United States through tlie Roman Propaganda, in a document 
dated November 24th, 1875, and piinted in some papers in this country 
soon after its reception." 

Archbishop Williams' interpretation of the Instructio : 

" From this document now before us in the original, we gather that 
the system of instruction pecuhar to secular schools appears even in itself 
to be full of peril. The document proceeds to attribute this peril to the 
severing of secular from religious instruction, the exclusion of the 
authority of the Church from the schools, the opportunity frequently 
given to teachers holding sectarian opinions to infuse error into the 
minds of the young, so plastic and receptive in the tender age of school 
days, and, in some cases, the co-education of the sexes. We quote as 
follows : 

"'Unless this danger of perversion be changed from proximate to 
remote, such schools cannot be frequented with a safe conscience.' " 

After reading the following paragraph of the Instructio, 
the Archbishop resuming said : 

« In case of a decided and persistent difference of opinion arising 
between the pastor and the parent, as to the sufficiency of the cause 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. II 5 

alleged, the matter must be referred to the decision of the Bishop, which 
decision will govern the conduct of both pastor and parent. 

'^^ Any priest, however, hearing confessions, in the private tribunal of 
penance, is free, in the exercise of his faculties in this as in all other 
cases, to give or withhold absolution, guided by the disposition of the 
penitent and his own judgment and discretion, and his knowledge of the 
facts and principles involved. 

" Parents, who for good and sufficient reasons omit to send their chil- 
dren to the parochial school, but otherwise secure for them efficient 
religious instruction, may (if well disposed) be admitted to the Sacra- 
ments." 

Limitations, with exhortations to prudence and charity 
end the pastoral charge. 

EDUCATIONAL SUMMARY THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 

Par. Coll. 

Schools. Acad. Asyl. Pupils. 

Province of Boston, 1880 123 37 21 44>7ii 

« «* " 1884 203 38 22 61,220 

Increase in four years, 80 i i 16,509 



CHAPTER XXV. 

HIS EMINENCE, JOHN CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY, LATE ARCHBISHOP 

OF NEW YORK FORMER SUFFRAGAN BISHOPS OF BOSTON, 

BURLINGTON, HARTFORD, PORTLAND, PROVIDENCE, 
SPRINGFIELD, PHILADELPHIA, SCRANTON, HARRISBURG, 
ERIE, PITTSBURG, NEWARK — PRESENT RT. REV. SUFFRA- 
GANS OF NEW YORK. PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF NEW YORK, 
SEPTEMBER, 1 883. 

JOHN CARDINAL MCCLOSKEY. 

By a happy coincidence, the same journal that brought 
the first certain inteUigence of the creation of His Emi- 
nence as the first American Cardinal, contained the pastoral 
letter of the Most Rev. Archbishop of New York, and Rt. 
Rev. Suffragans, proclaiming the Jubilee of 1875. ^^^ 
pastoral directs the following to the clergy : 

" Let us, moreover, especially give heed to the words of the Holy 
Father, \Yherein he exhorts us to use all diligence in coming, by every 
means in our power, to the rescue of imperiled youth, knowing, as we 
do, the many dangers to which .they are exposed and the dreadful ruin 
to which they are liable. But youth cannot be effectually guarded 
against these dangers without carefijl religious instruction and moral 
training. Nor can proper religious instruction and moral training be 
secured for them without the hearty and generous co-operation, not of 
parents alone, but of the faithful at large with their pastors, in aiding to 
multiply and sustain good Catholic schools. It is true that in order to 
do this sacrifices have to be made, and these too often by the classes 
least able to afford them. But what are these sacrifices compared with 
the vital interests that are at stake ! Let us, then, have courage and 
patience, hoping for better things in the future. The time may come, 
116 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. I I7 

sooner perhaps than we now have any reason to expect, when the con- 
viction will force itself upon the public mind, not only that a purely 
secular education is necessarily imperfect and insufficient, but that the 
popular system which upholds this sort of education is gradually but 
surely loosening the hold of any form of distinct religious profession or 
of Christian belief upon the minds of the growing generation, and is 
training up for the not far-distant future a race of free-thinkers and un- 
believers, which will soon ripen into a race not so much of anti- 
Catholics as of anti-Christians." 

These apparently mild, but really very radical, utterances 
on the present evils and future consequences of our " popu- 
lar system ' ' are not the individual official promulgation of 
the most eminent Cardinal alone, but are sent forth with the 
signatures of all the Bishops in Pennsylvania, New England, 
New York and New Jersey, forming the then extensive prov- 
ince of New York. 

These, at the date of this pronouncement, were Bishops 
Williams, Wood, Corrigan, Healy, Domenec, Goes- 
BRiAND, McNierney, Shanahan, O'Hara, McQuaid, 
Mullen, Ryan (of Buffalo), O'Reilly, Hendricken, 
Wadhams, McFarland, Loughlin. 

Rt. Rev. S. V. Ryan, in September, 1882, published a 
special terse Pastoral on education, from which we have 
room to give but the following extract : 

" If, however, there be any among our people who neglect this, their 
bounden duty, who, having suitable Catholic schools within easy reach, 
refuse to send their children to them, we hesitate not to say that they 
should not, cannot be admitted to the sacraments, and to repeat again 
the regulations of the diocese, that no child can be admitted to First 
Communion or Confirmation that has not passed at least one year pre- 
viously in a Catholic school, wherever such a school exists." 

Rt. Rev. M. J. O'Farrell, of Trenton, N. J., in his 
Pastoral issued on the Feast of St. Thomas of Aquin, 1883, 
after making all the salient points on Public Schoolism, 
sums up : 



Il8 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

"Here, then, dear brethren, you see that these Pubhc Schools, so 
much vaunted, i . Do not educate, for they do not improve the heart, 
but, at the most, only instruct the intellect ; 2. They do not even instruct 
well, since many branches of learning can only be studied in connection 
with religion ; 3. They are not truly American, since they abridge un- 
necessarily the rights of citizens, and sap the foundations of authority, 
by encroaching on the rights and authority of parents ; 4. They are un- 
christian, and are calculated to destroy Christian principles in the rising 
generations; 5. They tend to loosen moral laws and do away with all 
restraint upon the passions; 6. They impose an enormous tax, every 
year growing greater, upon the entire community, and a very unjust and 
unnecessary tax upon a large section of that community." ^ 

Having given no especial evidence in our cause from Rt. 
Rev. Bernard McQuaid, Bishop of Rochester, on account 
of his having already published, a volume of lectures on the 
Public School question with the exalted approbation of His 
Eminence, Cardinal McCloskey, late Archbishop of New 
York, we cannot more fitly supply the deficiency than by 
extracting the following official commentary on the In- 
struction from Rome, 1875, taken from an extended Pas- 
toral Letter, dated '' Rochester, October 4, 1878 " : 

"... Better than all other expressions with regard to this obligation 
of providing Catholic education for Catholic children, are the teachings 
of the Holy See as made known in a letter addressed to the Bishops of 
the United States. No Catholic is in harmony with the Church who 
maintains opinions opposed to these teachings. It is absurd to say that 
one Bishop more than another insists on the establishment of Catholic 
schools. It is not left with Bishops to choose in this matter. They re- 
ceive commands from an authority higher than their own, and know that 
their duty, based on their faith and conscience, obliges them to urge the 

1 After doing us the appreciated honor of quoting our translations of Papal and 
Conciliar documents, the Bishop of Trenton concludes : 

" We also refer you to a little work entitled, ' The Judges of Faith and Godless 
Schools,' for a fuller development of this side of the question. 

" No Catholic can refuse to listen and to obey such positive instructions from the 
Supreme Head of the Church and Her divinely-appointed pastors. 

" Hence we are obliged in conscience to condemn the present Godless, anti- 
Christian, anti-parental system of Public Schools , . ." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. II 9 

maintaining of Catholic schools wherever it is possible. The false idea, 
that one diocese has a law on the subject different from another, needs 
correction. The Bishop who fails to teach and enforce with pastoral 
zeal and vigilance the Church's law of Catholic schools for Catholic 
children, sins ; the pastor of a flock who neglects — being able — to pro- 
vide such a school for the young ones, the weak and helpless, the greatly 
exposed, sins ; the members of a parish, who refuse to co-operate ac- 
cording to their means in the establishment of a Catholic school for 
their children, sin. 

" Many schoolhouses have been built ; more are projected. The 
Bishop will not have done his whole duty ; priests and people will not 
have done theirs until every important mission in 'the diocese is supplied 
with this essential help to the preservation of faith and religion in the 
minds and hearts of the young. In the meantime, it is the duty of all 
to speak sound doctrine on this subject, precisely as the Holy See an- 
nounces it. It is a betrayal of God's sacred cause to neglect this duty. 
He who denies the Church's teaching in one point, whether that denial 
is in the spirit or the letter, prepares to deny it in other points that clash 
with his notions of what the truth should be." 

We fitly close the concurrent testimony of the Bishops of 
the Empire State, Long Island, and New Jersey, by this 
potent summary from the late grand Provincial Council of 
New York province : 

" Now, as you cannot easily provide in your homes for the entire 
training of your children, even when aided by the religious instructions 
in the Church, it becomes your imperative duty to send them to Chris- 
tian schools, that they may grow in Christian virtue, as well as the 
various branches of secular knowledge suitable for their advancement 
in the world. We have often spoken to you on this important subject. 
It has been frequently expounded to you by your pastors. Every Coun- 
cil, every assembly of Catholic Bishops held in modern times, has given 
the most positive decisions in its regard. The Supreme Pontiffs have 
again and again, with no faltering accents, but in clearest tones, pro- 
claimed from their high place of authority, the watchtower on which 
Christ has placed them to guide and direct the entire Church, the abso- 
lute necessity of making education more Christian; and it has been 
clearly decided by their superior power * that no Catholic, of whatever 
rank or condition he may be, can approve of any system of public in- 



I20 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

struction from which religion is totally excluded.' But even if the 
voice of the Church were not so clear, your own experience should save 
you from the crime of sending your children to Godless schools. See 
how infidelity and impiety are stalking over the land. See how con- 
tempt for authority, self-seeking and dishonesty, complete disregard for 
moral obligations and other kindred evils, are increasing so rapidly and 
assuming such gigantic proportions that men stand aghast at the pros- 
pect and are filled with alarm for the future destinies of our country. 
Thoughtful men of every religious denomination, are beginning to real- 
ize this danger, and many voices are now heard throughout the land 
deploring the evils which the want of religious instruction in the training 
of children is already bringing upon us. Schools without religion have 
been in existence long enough for even the least observant of men to be 
able to judge of their results. Their shortcomings in other respects have 
been often pointed out by others. 'By their fruits you shall know 
them,' 

" Given at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, this thirtieth day of 
September, eighteen hundred and eighty-three. 
John Cardinal McCloskey, 

Archbishop of New York. 

►J< Michael Augustine, Titular Archbishop of Petra. 

*^ John, Bishop of Brooklyn. 

►J^ Bernard, Bishop of Rochester. 

*^ Stephen Vincent, Bishop of Buffalo. 

*^ Francis, Bishop of Albany. 

►J< Edgar, Bishop of Ogdensburg. 

*^ WiNAND Michael, Bishop of Newark. 

1^ Michael Joseph, Bishop of Trenton. 

*^ John Joseph, Titular Bishop of Curium." 

Educational Summary. — The eight dioceses of the Prov- 
ince of New York, in the States of New York and New 
Jersey, count 490 parochial, 691 total schools, with 
144,620 total scholars. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE PROPRIMATIAL SEE OF BALTIMORE CARDINAL GIB- 
BONS PREDECESSORS MOST REVS. J. R. BAYLEY, M. J. 

SPALDING AND F. P. KENRICK — DR. J. J, KEANE, OF 
RICHMOND, VA. 

As in an ecclesiastical procession the ' ' last come first and 
the first last," the highest in dignity closes the train, so we 
have reserved for the last name to emblazon on the monu- 
ment we have attempted to rear, having left a place for it at 
the top of the column — that of the Proprimate of the 
United States, 

CARDINAL JAMES GIBBONS, APOSTOLIC DELEGATE, 

Presiding over the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. 
As the Metropolitan See of the Capital of Maryland is truly 
the '' Mother of all the Churches" in these United States, 
it has always been accorded the precedence of honor 
over the whole, grand hierarchy of the Union. Hear its 
teachings. 

The Cardinal, the present Archbishop of Baltimore 
when Bishop of Richmond and Administrator Apostolic of 
North Carolina, 1873, in ^ pastoral letter^ on Christian 
Education says : ' ' The religious and secular education of your 
children cannot be divorced from each other without inflicting 
a fatal wound to the soul, . . . usually paralyzing the moral 
faculties and fomenting a spirit of indifference in matters 

1 A copy of this pamphlet has been kindly and graciously loaned to the compiler 
for the extracts here given by the Cardinal Arbp. His Grace of Baltimore, James 
Gibbons, D. D. 

121 



122 THE JUDGES OF FAITH ! 

of faith; . . . such shallow and fragmentary education 
often proving a curse instead of a blessing. . . . The /oss 
of Catholic Faith is another evil resulting from the separa- 
tion of a religious from a secular education." The italics 
are His Grace's own. '' . . . Whence arise these defections 
from the faith?" Archbishop Gibbons queries. First, 
"from neglect of early Christian education by parents." 
Next, "by being sent to a school where his religion is 
ignored or held up to ridicule," . . . that is to a public 
secular school. Are morals any safer in the keeping of 
irresponsible commissioners, trustees and public teachers? 
"It does not appear," says the mild Proprimate, "that 
vice recedes in the United States in proportion as public 
education advances." And here follows an enumeration of 
public crimes committed chiefly by educated scoundrels, 
" uncontrolled by religion." The remedy for us lies in the 
conclusion that Catholic parochial schools must be estab- 
lished and fostered, if we would preserve the faith of our 
children. Otherwise, the consequence will be that " without 
such schools a parish is sooner or later destined to languish 
and decay. ' ' 

Finally the great Archbishop sums up: ". . . if no pro- 
vision is made for the Christian culture of the rising youth, 
it is to be feared that twenty years hence, it will be much 
easier to find churches for a congregation, than a congrega- 
tion for our churches ! ' ' 

His Grace of Baltimore's extended educational pastoral 
of January, 1883, is but an amplified commentary on the 
wording of the pamphlet just quoted. This much is super- 
added : "It may safely be asserted that the future status of 
Catholicity in the United States is to be determined by the 
success or failure of our day-schools." 

Admitting the advantages of secular instruction he com- 
plains : " . . . The system espoused does not go far 
enough." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 23 

The Metropolitan Pastor finally enjoins that every parish 
of 300 souls in a radius of three miles shall establish and 
maintain its proper parochial school. 

To go back and give the traditional teaching of this See, 
accounted the first in the land, the first remove is the former 
Bishop of Newark, and late Archbishop of Baltimore, 

MOST REV. JOHN ROOSEVELT BAYLEY. 

In his pastoral for Lent 1872, his last at Newark, and just 
as he was about to be elevated to the sublime pinnacle of 
honor he lately so deservedly occupied, he speaks at length 
of education, which he remarks he had so often, during his 
visitations and in his pastorals, dwelt upon. After detailing 
earnestly and pointedly the duties of home education, he 
turns with no less distinctness and vigor to Catholic educa- 
tion in the parish schools, and says : 

" I would earnestly exhort the pastors of souls to spare no exertions 
to establish these schools, and watch over them themselves with the 
greatest solicitude, and I would exhort all Catholics to shrink from no 
sacrifice in order to have them in their midst. A paj'ish without such 
schools does not deserve the name, and can bring little consolation to the 
hearts of either priest or people." 

Do a church and congregation, even with a resident 
priest, make a parish, where Archbishop Bayley governed 
the flock of Christ?^ No. ^^ No school, no parish!'^ is 
the word. As to the public schools he has a very unequivo- 
cal antipathy to them on account ''of the decided and 
strong-flavored anti-Catholic tone pervading them," and 
further says : ) 

1 The Most Rev. Archbishop reiterated his former teachings in his Lenten Pas- 
toral of 1876 ; education is a prominent topic. And in the same year, writing to the 
author of the Popular History of the Catholic Church in the United States the 
Proprimate said : " I have always been a great advocate for educating our children 
in our own schools, and if we could get no better — in hedge schools." (J. O'K. 
Murray's Popular History, p. 436.) 



124 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

" We would gladly avail ourselves of the public schools if it w^ere in 
our power to do so. But as they are at present conducted it is impossi- 
ble for us to send our children to them. The public schools in this 
State are virtually Protestant schools, as much so as if Protestantism was 
the established religion of the State ; and I have yet to find out the 
difference between Church and State, and Schools and State, as these 
schools are managed." 

The late Most Reverend occupant of the See ^^ first in 
honor ' ' of the United States, would seem to have inherited 
part of his zeal for Catholic education from his immediate 
predecessors : if we may judge from what we know of his 
and their teaching in the matter. 

MOST REV. MARTIN JOHN SPALDING. 

The Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding, the lamented and 
prominent advocate of the Catholic cause, in his revisions 
for the re-edition of his famous Miscellanea, has abated 
nothing from the plain and caustic character of his original 
essay on common schools. It is to be borne in mind that 
Archbishop Spalding had just completed his review of his works 
as far as his Miscellanea inclusively, at the time of his death. 

Why are we Catholics in the United States opposed to 
the public school system? Is it because the Church is 
opposed to popular education? No. But — according to 
Martin John Spalding — '^ because we conscientiously be- 
lieve that our present common school is grievously defective 
and faulty ; and that, whether intentionally or not, it in- 
fringes our religious liberties .... because it compels us 
to pay taxes for the support of schools, to which we cannot 
conscientiously send our children^ (Miscell. pp. 653, 654, 
John Murphy & Co., Baltimore, 1875.) 

The Archbishop continues in this strain : 

*' Our present system of primary education either ignores religion 
altogether, or it teaches principles which we believe to be false or dan- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 125 

gerous ; or, at best, it confines religious instruction to certain vague and 
unmeaning generalities, which are, in their practical influence on the 
moral and religious training of children, probably worse than no teach- 
ing at all. ... To teach a child's head is not to educate, much less to 
form, his heart." (p. 654.) 

The illustrious author confirms our repeated asseverations 
and multiplied testimonies as to the baleful influence of 
associations in public schools (p. 656). "If. . . Catholic 
children are not expressly taught what is opposed to their 
religion, and if the school books they use are not tainted 
with anti-Catholic prejudices and misrepresentations — which 
is but too frequently the case — they are often singled out as 
Catholics and perhaps 'foreigners,' by their school com- 
panions, and sometimes by their teachers, and become 
objects of ridicule." The children either lose their faith or 
have to leave the school ! Is it an affair of conscience with 
Catholics ? There is no other word oftener in the Arch- 
bishop's mouth, than "conscience " with its correlatives. 

The essay is concluded by the following : 

" Yes, we can no longer deny it ; the great defect, the gnawing 
canker, the blighting curse of our educational system, is the absence 
from it of a wholesome religious instruction. Under it our children are 
practically reared up more like enlightened pagans, preparing merely 
for this world, than as instructed Christians^ well and thoroughly 
grounded in their faith and making their novitiate for heaven." 

The Italics are the Archbishop's own. 

MOST REV. F. p. KENRICK. 

It were almost a sin to pretermit, in this connection, the 
theological opinion of Francis Patrick Kenrick (immediate 
predecessor of the author of the " Miscellanea"), who was 
complimented by Engelbert, Cardinal, Archbishop of 
Mechlin, Belgium, in the approbation of the Mechlin edi- 
tion (i860) of Kenrick' s Theology, as " a most learned man, 



1 26 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

and most solid pillar and ornament of the Church in the 
United States." 

Speaking to parish priests on their duties he says : 

" The pastor is bound to watch over the instruction of children in 
profane letters and knowledge, lest their faith be endangered, either by 
the bad principles or morals of teachers, or by bad books. This is 
especially to be attended to in this country, where the system of Public 
schools (publicae disciplinae ratio) plainly tends to deprive children of 
instruction in Catholic doctrine : which is proved by the results," ^ 

The Bishop of Richmond, Va. , and late Vicar-Apostolic 
of North Carolina, in his Pastoral Letter for Lent, 1879, 
with which we have been favored through the hands of Very 
Rev. A. Van de Vyver, his Vicar-General, has the follow- 
ing:— 

" Unchristian education is the principal means made use of by the 
enemy of mankind for spreading and caiTying on his work of destruc- 
tion. When education is positively anti-Christian, it forms the audacious 
leaders who are ready to cry out against the Lord and against His Christ, 
* let us break their bonds asunder, and let us cast away their yoke from 
us.' And when it is only negatively bad, by being simply not Christian, 
it forms the minds and hearts which, for want of proper religious mold- 
ing, are ready to be deluded by the sophistry of demagogues, and to 
form the rank and file of their army. 

" It is, perhaps, not our province to deplore the sad fact that, in some 
of the principal non-Catholic educational institutions of our country, the 
virus of anti-religious teaching has, of late, been openly instilled into 
the minds of the rising generation. 

" Nor may it be our place to dwell upon the dangers of a system of 
national education, which, by excluding religion, in order to be unsec- 
tarian, naturally tends to disseminate religious indifference, with all its 
dire consequences. On this we do not need to dwell, since, thanks be 
to God, nearly every parish among us is blessed with a good Catholic 

1 Puerorum instructioni in litteris scientiisque humanis invigilare debet parochus, 
ne fides periclitetur, ex ludimagistrorum principiis vel moribus, vel ex libris pravis. 
Id maxime curandum hac in regione, ubi publicae disciplinae ratio plane tendit ad 
pueros doctrina Catholica destituendos : quod et rei eventu comprobatur." (Theol. 
Moral. Vol. I., p. 232. Mechliniae MDCCCLX.) 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 2/ 

school, and since those whom it concerns would not be likely to accept 
advice from us. 

" But in your minds and hearts, venerable and beloved brethren, we 
desire to confirm more and more the conviction of the necessity of 
Christian education, and the resolution to secure its blessings to our 
Catholic children, at the cost of any exertions or of any pecuniary sac- 
rifice. Recently a gentleman high in office in one of our municipalities 
acknowledged that, because Nihilism was advocated by educated men, 
by students and professors of European universities, he had supposed 
that it was a good and salutaiy advance in their national politics ; and 
when he discovered that it was one of the worst forms of leveling 
Socialism, he was for the first time impressed with the conviction that 
we are not to ask merely whether people are educated, but what sort of 
education they receive, and that to school the mind without also edu- 
cating the heart, to give book-learning without also giving sound moral 
and religious principles, is to train a body of men who will be all the 
more dangerous for their intellectual ability." 

Such is the judgment formed by Rt. Rev. J. J. Keane, 
who, though so modest and retired in his sparsely populated 
capital of Virginia, and presiding over the relatively small 
diocese of Richmond, is publicly credited with the com- 
position of the late pastoral of the Third Plenary Council, 
the finest document probably ever issued ,by a conciliar 
assembly in the New World. ThiS' entitles the scholarly 
Bishop of Richmond to the testimony expressed in the 
Pastoral, as quoted with commentary in Chapter I. 

Educational Summary. — The Proprimatial Province of 
Baltimore, including Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West 
Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Eastern 
Florida, has i6o parochial schools, 249 total schools, at- 
tended by 27,470 scholars. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE SACRED CONGREGATION'S INSTRUCTION TO THE RT. REV. 
BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA 
ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NOVEMBER 24TH, 1 8 75. 

As this authoritative Instruction of the Sacred Congrega- 
tions, approved and confirmed by our late most lamented 
Holy Father, Pius IX., explains itself, we give without 
comment a literal translation from the original Latin text : ^ 

*' Often and again has the Sacred Congregation de Propa- 
ganda Fide been advertised that the greatest evils immi- 
nently threaten Catholic youth in the schools called Public 
in the United States of North America. By reason of this 
sad intelligence the aforesaid Sacred Congregation has 
thought proper to propose to the most honored Bishops of 
that country certain questions which referred partly to the 
reasons why the faithful permit their children to frequent 
non-Catholic schools, partly to the means by which youths 
may be made to avoid such schools. Now, the answers 
given by the said Bishops were referred, as the nature of the 
business demanded, to the Supreme Congregation Universalis 
Inquisitionis : and the affair having been diligently examined 
on Wednesday, June 30th, 1875, i^ was determined that the 
matter should be absolved by the following instruction, 
which, thereupon, our most Holy Lord (Pius IX.) deigned 
to approve and confirm on Wednesday, November 24th, 
of the same year. 

'* And, first, the system itself of instructing youth proper 
and peculiar to these schools must come under considera- 

1 Instructio de Scholis Publicis ad Revmos Episcopos. — See Appendix III. 
128 



\ 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 29 

tion. This system the Sacred Congregation considers by 
its nature to be fraught with danger and very hostile to 
CathoKcity. For, since the system of such like schools 
excludes all teaching of religion, the pupils neither learn in 
them the rudiments of faith, nor are instructed in the pre- 
cepts of the Church : hence they will be deprived of the 
knowledge most necessary to man, without which a Christian 
life is impossible. Now, in this kind of schools youths are 
instructed from their childhood, not to say from very 
infancy : at which age, as is evident, the seeds of virtue and 
vice take most tenacious root. And, certainly, it is an 
immense evil that such tender children should grow up 
without religion. 

' ' Again, in the aforesaid schools, as they are divorced 
from the authority of the Church, teachers indiscriminately 
of every sect are employed ; and as no law prohibits them 
from doing harm to youth, they are left free to sow errors 
and the seeds of vices in tender minds. 

" Certain corruption likewise ensues from the fact that in 
these same schools or in many of them, youths of both sexes 
are congregated in the same room for the recitation of les- 
sons, and males and females are ordered to sit on the same 
bench (in eodem scamno) : all which have the effect of 
lamentably exposing the young to loss in faith, and endan- 
gering of morals. 

''Now, if this proximate danger of perversion be not 
made remote, such schools cannot be frequented with a safe 
conscience. 

"The Sovereign Pontiff (Pius IX.) declared this in plain 
words when writing to a former Archbishop of Friburg, 
July 14th, 1864: 

'' 'For, certainly, wherever in whatsoever places or coun- 
tries, this most pernicious design of expelling the authority 
of the Church would be undertaken or carried into effect, 
and youth would be exposed to loss in faith, the Church 
9 V 



130 TfHE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

should not only endeavor with most pressing importunity 
and spare no pains to obtain for youth the necessary training 
and education, but it would also be obliged to warn all the 
faithful and declare to them that such schools, hostile to the 
Catholic Church, cannot in conscience be frequented.' 

*' These words, founded as they are on natural and divine 
law, enunciate a general principle, and obtain universal 
application in all countries wherever this most pernicious 
system of instructing youth shall unhappily have been 
introduced. The most honored prelates must therefore 
use every possible endeavor and m^ans to protect the flock 
committed to them from all the contagion of the public 
schools.^ 

" For this purpose, all agree, there is nothing so necessary 
as that Catholics should everywhere have schools of their own, 
and these nowise inferior to the Public Schools. No pains, 
therefore, are to be spared to found Catholic schools where 
they are wanting ; to enlarge them, appoint and arrange 
them more and more perfectly, that they may be put on an 
equality with the Public Schools, both in their teaching and 
management. 

"For the fulfilling of so holy and necessary a design, 
members of religious societies, both men and women, may, 
at the discretion of the Bishop, be usefully employed. 
That, however, the expenses necessary for so great a work 
may be the more willingly and abundantly supplied by the 
faithful, they will need to be seriously admonished by public 
sermons or private conversations, as occasion offers, that 
they will seriously neglect their duty unless, at all possible 
sacrifices, they furnish the means of supporting Catholic 
schools. On this point those especially must be admonished 
who are pre-eminent among their fellow- Catholics on 
account of wealth and influence with the people, as well as 
those who are elected to the Legislature. In the country in 

1 " Ab omni contagione" : literally, " from all contact with." 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 131 

question there is no civil law impeding Catholics from edu- 
cating their children if they please, at their own schools, in 
all knowledge and piety. 

" The Catholic people are therefore happily in a position 
to avert the damage with which the Public Schools threaten 
Catholicity. 

"Let all be convinced it is for their greatest interest, not 
only as single individuals and members of families, but 
also as citizens of that most flourishing American nation, 
which affords such grounds of hope to the Church, that 
religion and piety should not be expelled from their 
schools. 

''On the other hand, the Sacred Congregation is not 
ignorant that sometimes circumstances are such that Catholic 
parents may conscientiously commit their children to Public 
Schools. But this they cannot do unless for so acting they 
have a sufficient reason ; whether, though, in a certain par- 
ticular case, there be or not such sufficient reason, will be 
left to the conscience and judgment of the Bishops. And, 
according to what is detailed above, this reason will gener- 
ally be judged to exist when either there is no Catholic 
school (in the place), or the one at hand is but little fitted to 
give youth an education suited to their condition and cir- 
cumstances. 

''But that any Public Schools may conscientiously be 
frequented, the danger of perversion, more or less inherent 
in the very system itself must, by means of fitting preven- 
tives and precautions, be changed from proximate to 
remote. 

"It is therefore first to be considered whether, in the 
schools, to which there is question of sending, the danger of 
perversion be of such a kind that it cannot be made remote 
at all : as is the case wherever there are taught or done 
things that are contrary to Catholic doctrine or good morals; 
and which cannot be even listened to, much less done, 



132 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

without hurt to the soul. For, such danger, as is self- 
evident, must be altogether avoided at every risk, even of 
life itself 

"That, then, youth may conscientiously be permitted to 
attend (any) Public Schools, they mus|^, at least, outside of 
school hours, diligently and properly receive the necessary 
Christian training {institutioneni) and education. Where- 
fore, pastors and missionaries, mindful of the most oppor- 
tune regulations of the Council of Baltimore in this matter, 
must be zealous in teaching catechism, and while explaining 
it insist particularly on those truths of faith and morals 
which are more frequently attacked by infidels and heretics ; 
not failing with diligent care to fortify youths exposed to 
so many dangers by inculcating the frequent use -of the 
Sacraments, as well as piety towards the Blessed Virgin ; 
and never ceasing in their endeavors to make them cling 
firmly to their religion. Let parents, or those who hold 
their place, watch vigilantly over their children, and either 
in person, or if less capable themselves, through others, 
ask them about their lessons, see what books they are 
studying; and if they discover therein anything hurtful, 
provide remedies ; and, finally, prohibit and prevent their 
children from the familiarity and company of fellow students, 
from whom they may run danger in their faith or morals, or 
who are corrupt in their morals. 

*' But whatever parents neglect to give their children 
this necessary training and education ; or whoever permit 
their children to frequent schools in which the ruin of souls 
cannot be avoided ; or, finally, whoever having in their 
locality a good Catholic school, fitly appointed to teach 
their children ; or having the opportunity of educating 
their offspring in another place, nevertheless send them to 
Public Schools, without sufficient reasons and without the 
necessary precautions by which the proximate danger of 
perversion may be made remote : all these, it is evident 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 33 

from Catholic moral teaching, if they are contumacious, 
cannot be absolved in the Sacrament of Penance. " ^ 



1 As an augury of the progress of unanimity of practical obedience to the direc- 
tions of the Holy See and the Hierarchy of the United States, behold this manly 
commentary on the Instructio : When the two great Irish and German Catholic 
societies Jield their simultaneous sessions in the fall of 1885, Hon. H. J. Spaunhorst, 
President of the Central Verein, made a spirited address to the I. C. B. Union, th,e 
effect of which was made manifest by these resolutions of the Union. 

" Whereas, We have heard with pleasure and satisfaction the resolutions of the 
Roman Catholic German Central Verein, as expressed through its honored president, 
to the effect that for the future welfare of our religion and country, education based 
on religion is necessary, and that any other education is worse than a nullity, and in 
their support of Catholic schools the Society of the Verein do practically recognize 
these principles. 

" Resolved, That we, the members of the I. C. B. U., in convention assembled, 
commend these sentiments and their practice, and do pledge ourselves to emulate 
their zeal and earnestly second the efforts of our Bishops and priests in their endeavor 
to secure a purely Catholic Christian education for our youth." 

It will also interest to know that in the model archdiocese of Baltimore the ex- 
ample has been set by this mother-metropolitan church, of making an appeal to the 
Legislature and enlightened public opinion in favor of Catholic schools, by writing 
up statistics showing the amount saved the State through Catholics taxing them- 
selves for their own institutions of learning. The education of over 22,000 pupils in 
Maryland is saved the State — unjustly. St. Augustine, Fla., Lexington and Pewee 
Valley, Ky., are known to have conceded this right of Christians to the benefit of 
their own taxes, by paying from one-third to one-half the Public school fund to 
Catholic schools. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

■ '* 

THE TEACHING OF THE THIRD PLENARY COUNCIL OF BALTI- 
MORE ON THE NEW SYSTEM OF PRIMARY AND PAROCHIAL 
SCHOOLS WAYS AND MEANS THE REGULATIONS IN- 
SPIRED AND REVISED BY THE HOLY SEE — TEACHERS. 

The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, whose decrees 
were revised by Leo XIII., 21 September, 1885, has sur- 
passed all preceding Councils on American soil in the num- 
ber, importance, and cogency of its regulations on the sub- 
ject of education, enjoined as the law to be strictly followed 
by pastors, teachers and people. Upwards of fifty of the one 
hundred and eighty-two pages of the body of the volume — - 
" Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis Tertii Actaet Decreta " — 
are taken up almost exclusively with all grades of schools, 
proceeding from the Elementary, through the Intermediate 
schools, colleges, and academies, to the " Catholic Univer- 
sity of America," now on the eve of being founded. At 
the end of Chapter L, Title VI., the following decrees are 
set down as the fundamental rules governing the whole 
educational legislation : 

'' We determine and decree : 

" I. That hardby every church, where it does not already 
exist, a parochial school is to be erected within two years 
from the promulgation of this Council (January 6th, Feast 
of Epiphany, 1886) and to be kept up in the future, unless 
the Bishop see fit to grant a further delay on account of 
more than ordinarily grave difficulties to be overcome in 
its establishment. 

"II. That a priest, who, within the aforesaid time, hin- 
134 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 35 

ders by serious negligence, the building and maintenance 
of a school, or does not regard the repeated admonitions 
of the Bishop, deserves removal from that Church. 

'' III. That the mission (missionem) or parish, neglecting 
to aid the priest in the erection and support of a school so 
that, on account of this supine negligence, the same can- 
not exist, is to be reprimanded by the Bishop, and by every 
prudent and efficient means urged to supply the necessary 
helps (subsidia). 

' ' IV. That all Catholic parents are bound to send their 
children to parochial schools, unless they provide sufficiently 
and fully for their Christian education at home, or at other 
Catholic schools. They may, however, be permitted for a 
good reason, approved by the Bishop, and using mean- 
while the necessary precautions and remedies, to send them 
to other schools. But it is left to the judgment of the Or- 
dinary to decide what is a Catholic school. ' ' 

WAYS AND MEANS OF PROMOTING PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.^ 

^' If, on the one side, we most strictly enjoin on the con- 
sciences of priests, the faithful, and, especially of Catholic 
parents, the observance of the above-written Decrees; on 
the other, we regard it our bounden duty as Bishops, to 
labor with all our strength in providing Catholic parents 
with not only nominal, but actually good and efficient 
schools, which * shall be nowise inferior to the Public 
Schools,' as the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation 
directs. We, therefore, shall propose and enjoin some regu- 
lations, by which parochial schools may be brought up to 
the standard of usefulness and perfection demanded by the 
honor of the Church and the eternal and temporal welfare 
of the children, and merited by the generous devotion of 
the parents. ... 

1 Section II., "Acta et Deer.," pp. 105 sqq. 



136 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

" I. First as to priests : We decree that candidates for 
the priesthood be taught in the seminaries that one of their 
principal future duties, especially now-a-days, relates to the 
Christian education of the young; and that it is simply 
impossible to fulfill this duty without parochial or other 
truly Catholic schools. Therefore, in the study of Psy- 
chology, the Normal Course, and Pastoral Theology, let 
special stress be laid upon the matter of education. The 
students must also learn the method of explaining Cate- 
chism and Bible History in a clear and solid manner. . . . 
Let priests love their schools 'as the apple of their eye,' 
frequently visit and inspect them, or some department of 
them, at least once a week; watching over the children's 
morals, and spurring on their diligence by proper entice- 
ments. Let them teach Catechism and Bible History them- 
selves, or have them rightly taught by the religious in charge. 
Take particular notice of the other studies ; and by public 
examinations once or twice a year, bring their schools before 
the eyes of their people and commend them to their patron- 
age. Especial care be taken that all text-books be written 
(or edited) by Catholic authors. . . . The . priests' promo- 
tion to an irremovable rectorate of other dignity will depend 
upon their care of their schools." 

Here may be interjected what the Plenary Council directs 
in regard to Catechism — which, it is to be trusted, will be 
regarded as not so much intruding the affairs and duties of 
the Rev. Clergy on the notice of the people, as affording 
protection for pastors to refer to, when sometimes the laity 
may be disposed to attribute their conduct to the caprice of 
over-zeal or even a domineering spirit. 

"It is our desire that rectors of churches or their assist- 
ants very often visit the Catechism classes on Sundays, and 
on week-days those of the Parish-schools, as well as Col- 
leges, or High-schools and Academies of boys and girls not 
under the management of priests. Teachers, whether Re- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 37 

ligious or laymen, not of priestly dignity, have not assigned 
to them the duty of teaching the Word of God, though they 
are to be accounted as assistants in the training of youth — 
* The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge and they shall 
require the law at his mouth.' We therefore command 
rectors to give assiduous attention to the little ones, especi- 
ally at the time they are being prepared to approach the 
Holy Table for the first time. The rectors themselves or 
their assistants shall, at least where they reside or can easily 
reach, teach such children the Catechism for six weeks at 
the shortest, three times each week. Let no one be admit- 
ted to Confirmation if not diligently instructed in what 
pertains to the nature and effects of this Sacrament .... 
Also arrange so that boys and girls shall be taught more 
thoroughly in Christian doctrine and morals for two years 
after their first Communion." ^ 

Referring to the chapter on the Education of the Young, 
the Fathers continue by laying down the 

DUTY OF THE LAITY. 

*'II. As to our faithful people, we exhort and command 
them to, be so well instructed that they may become accus- 
tomed to regard their Parochial Schools as an essential 
adjunct of the parish, without which the future existence of 
the congregation will be imperiled. Let them be clearly 
and earnestly taught that the school is nowise a matter of 
choice with the priest to prove his overflowing zeal or 
adopted to fill up his leisure time pleasantly and honorably. 
It is a duty and burden imposed upon the priest by the 
Church, to be religiously borne by him — but not without 
the aid of his people. Nor with less zeal and prudence is 
the erroneous opinion to be uprooted from the minds of the 
laity, viz., that the solicitude for the school is to be confined 

1 Section II., " Acta et Deer.," p. 119. 



138 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

to that portion of the • congregation actually and directly 
making use of it for their children. It must be plainly 
demonstrated that the profits and blessings accruing from 
the preservation of faith and morals in Parochial schools 
redound to the benefit of the whole community. 

^'Whence it shall come to pass that the people of the parish 
will prize and cherish their school, next to their church, as 
the preserver of faith and good morals and the fruitful mother 
of children, who shall be a joy and a consolation to all. 

" The laity should give the schools fitting and generous 
support, by uniting their efforts to enable each parish to pay 
the ' current expenses for education. The faithful must be 
admonished by ' pastoral letters, sermons and even in private 
conversations about the grievous neglect of their duty if they 
fail in anything to provide for Catholic schools. In this 
matter those especially need urging who possess more wealth 
and popular influence. ' (Instr. S. C.) Prompt and cheer- 
ful payment of the small monthly pension charged for each 
scholar ought to be made by all who can afford it. Neither 
ought the other parishioners refuse to increase the revenues 
of the Church to the extent necessary to meet the new ex- 
penses. All, whether parents, heads of families or young 
people earning wages, ought to become members of a Society 
for the Promotion of Schools. ' This Association to be 
recommended to all, and already introduced into many 
localities, with the special blessing of the Sovereign Pontiff, 
has for its object to collect small but regular contributions 
designed to make the schools, if not altogether, at least 
partially free schools.' These needful means being gener- 
ously supplied, we shall witness a marked improvement in 
the external and internal arrangements of the schcrol-houses j 
the number of teachers can be readily increased ; the scholars 
will be divided into less numerous and better graded classes 
— all co-operating in the grand work of lifting our schools 
to a higher degree of efficiency. ' ' 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 39 



SCHOOL PRIVILEGES OF THE LAITY. 

, * ' But we desire also that certain rights and privileges, which 
shall be more accurately defined in Diocesan Synods, be 
conceded to our laymen in respect to the schools — reserving 
the exclusive rights of the priest, as regards particularly the 
appointment and dismissal of teachers, the discipline of the 
school and superintendence in spirituals." ^ 

NEW LEGISLATION ON TEACHERS. 

'' But since the status and improvement of our schools 
mostly depend upon the fitness of the masters, the utmost 
care is to be taken that none but capable and even excellent 
teachers be put in charge. We therefore decree and direct : 
None shall be admitted in future to the office of teaching 
our parochial schools but such as shall have proved them- 
selves by previous examination capable and unexceptionable. 
Within one year from the promulgation of the Council 
(Epiphany, 1886), there shall be named by the Bishops 
three (3) priests most skilled in school matters, who shall 
constitute the 'Diocesan Board of Examination.' They 
shall be appointed only usque ad revocationem (subject to 
revocation) and shall solemnly promise in the hands of the 
Bishop that they will perform the duties of their office to 
the best of their ability, and in accordance with the rules 
laid down by the Bishop. . . . This Board shall examine 
all teachers of both sexes, whether religious belonging to 
some Diocesan Community of laymen or women, who in 

1" Three or more laymen of approved conduct and capability shall be either 
directly appointed by the priest or elected by the congregation from among the names 
proposed by him. These together with the pastor of the Church and three other 
priests designated by the Bishop, shall constitute a School Board, whose business 
shall be to inspect the schools once or twice a year. But the laymen in this Board 
shall inspect and examine none but their own parochial schools." This is added 
from the Roman Schema Decretorum, p. 57, to show the probable outcome of 
Diocesan legislation. 



I40 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

future shall desire to take charge of teaching in parochial 
schools. To them they shall give, if found worthy, a cer- 
tificate or diploma, without which no priest shall engage 
any teacher of either sex to teach his school — unless he or 
she shall have been teaching before the celebration of the 
Council (ante celebrationem concilii).^ This diploma shall 
remain in force for five (5) years and shall hold good for all 
dioceses. At the end of this period another and final exami- 
• nation shall be required of teachers. Those who shall have 
failed in either examination shall receive no diploma, but 
shall be put off for examination in the next following year." 

TIME AND MODE OF THE EXAMINATION. 

*'This examination shall take place once a year: for 
members of Diocesan communities in the houses and at the 
times agreed upon by the examiners and Superiors — for 
seculars at the time and in the place designated by the 
examiners. The matter and questions for the written 
examination shall be prepared by the whole Board. On 
the day of examination these shall be proposed either by 
one of the Board or by another priest deputed by the Presi- 
dent thereof, in a letter armed with the seal of the President 
and opened in the presence of those to be examined, who 
shall work out their solutions and answers under the eyes of 
one of. the said Board or his deputy. The written part of 
the examination having been submitted to, and reviewed 
by, the examiners, an oral examination shall be held before 
the whole Board as soon as possible. Before they leave the 
place of examination, the examiners shall write three lists 
of those who shall have satisfactorily passed \ one of which 
they shall deliver to the Religious Superior, or to the secular 
candidate j the second they shall retain for the President 
of the Board ; the third they shall transmit to the office of 

1 The date of the Fathers' Letter to the Holy Father, and of the Fifth and Last 
Public Session of the Council, is Dec. 7th, 1884. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 141 

the Chancellor of the Diocese. . . . ^ Besides this Board 
for the examination of teachers for the whole diocese, 
Bishops shall appoint many other ^'School Boards," 
according to difference of places and languages, composed 
of one or more priests to examine schools in cities and 
country districts. It shall be the duty of these Boards to 
visit and examine each school in their circuit once or twice 
a year, reporting accurately the condition of the schools to 
the President of the Diocesan Board for the information 
and action of the Bishop. 

" In order that a sufficient corps of Catholic teachers 
may be created, and each and all be most thoroughly pre- 
pared for their sacred and sublime office, we admonish 
those interested (Episcopi), either of their own motion, or 
if necessary, by calling in the authority of the Sacred Con- 
gregation, to act in common with the proper Superiors of 
communities. We refer to the establishment, where needed, 
of Normal Schools. These shall be instituted in convenient 
houses, where junior members may be put in training for a 
protracted period under expert and most capable preceptors 
of the different sciences, school discipline, methods of 
teaching and other matters connected with the proper 
government of schools. 

" Wherever priests, secular or regular, erect and carry on 
successfully these Normal Schools, as we know has already 
been done in several localities, they will certainly be doing 
a work worthy of every praise and encouragement." ^ 

1 In the following paragraph it is ordered, that " if the Bishop shall have dis- 
covered Regular or Diocesan approved communities sending out teachers unfit 
for their office, he shall admonish the Superior to see to the matter without unneces- 
sary delay (inter congruum tempus providebit). If the Superior neglect to do this, 
the Sacred Congregation is to be advised, in order that it may apply the fitting 
remedies. In case certain agreements have been or shall be made between the 
Bishops and Superiors of Communities relating to the appointment or removal of 
teachers of either sex in parochial schools, or regarding the method of teaching 
secular branches (sdentias profanas), these agreements shall be inviolably ob- 
served." Acta et Decreta, p. 109, 

2 Ibid,, pp. 105-110. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

CATHOLIC PRIMARY AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS FOR INDIANS 

AND NEGROES THE MOST COMPLETE STATISTICS OF 

CATHOLIC INDIAN EDUCATION. 

CATHOLIC COLORED PEOPLE. 

The colored race in the Republic has doubled or very 
nearly doubled in the twenty years succeeding the Civil 
War, and now numbers between seven and a half and eight 
millions of souls. '^ Not one-half of these are even nomi- 
nally attached to any sect bearing the name of Christian — 
3,000,000 being the utmost estimate of all the members of 
every denomination in the South. 

Not more than 100,000 negroes are counted as Catholics. 
Out of the school population of blacks, 1,803,257, the grand 
total of enrolment amounts to but 802,722 — leaving a mil- 
lion colored school children out of school. And the Com- 
missioner of Education reports that the rolls do not keep 
pace with the increase of the population. 

We learn from the same official source that the three 
States containing nine-tenths of the Catholic negroes, have 
about the lowest percentage of school attendance : " Mary- 
land less than one-half; Kentucky a little more than one- 
third ; and Louisiana something more than one-quarter. ' ' ^ 

That Protestant societies are doing more in their material 

1 Bishop — now Archbishop — Gross, formerly of Savannah, Ga., puts the total at 
8,000,000. Rev. J. R. Slattery in the " Catholic World " (April, 1885), gives census 
of 1880, 6,580,793. 

2 Facts and Suggestions about the Colored People.— " Catholic World," April, 
1885. 

142 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 143 

way for the advancement of the negro than either the Gov- 
ernment of the land or the members of the Catholic Church, 
is evident from the fact that the American Missionary Soci- 
ety gives school aid to the amount of fourteen dollars per 
child ; the Freedmans' Aid, seventeen dollars per child ; and 
the Public School Fund and individual Catholic Churches, 
only five dollars each per head of their school attendance. 
It is claimed on indisputable grounds that white Catholics 
in the South are entirely too few and too poor to do any- 
thing adequate towards helping the more helpless and poorer 
negroes, and that aid must be extended by organized efforts 
at the North to second the views of the Church in the con- 
version of the millions of the ''Africans in America ' ' and the 
preservation of the faith of the handful of her colored children 
scattered over seventeen States. Many millions will have 
their slight and misty ideas of faith and morality swallowed 
up in the lowest of low sects and sets of Nagualists and 
Voudooists — not to count the still surer vanishing of prin- 
ciples and tenets in the Public School process to which they 
are being subjected. Oh ! for a Peter Claver, or St. Bene- 
dict the Moor, among the clergy to strengthen the arms of 
the noble missionaries of the English College at Mill Hill, 
who are fighting amidst poverty and the endurance of dis- 
gustful surroundings, the demons of gross ignorance and 
brutal immorality of their colored children ! 

' ' St. Joseph Missionary Society began systematic work 
among these people about thirteen years ago, and held its 
First General Chapter at Baltimore over ten years ago. It 
took charge of the mission in Louisville, Ky., in 1872 ; of the 
mission in Charleston, S. C, in 1875; ^^"^^ ^^ ^^^ mission 
of St. Augustine, in Washington, D. C, in 1881. In parts 
of Maryland where the colored Catholics are quite strong, 
they have no special churches, but attend, the parish churches. 
In St. Mary's county they are under the control of the Jesu- 
its. In Florida, Kentucky, and indeed, in all the Southern 



144 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

States, there are Catholic colored schools, taught by nuns 
and brothers, and especial mention is made of colored 
Catholic churches in nine large cities." 

Educational Summary. — -Besides one colored convent, 
St.. Monica's in Baltimore, we have in thirteen dioceses 
three partial asylums and thirty-eight schools, aggregating 
about 2,900 children. Of the colored Catholic school 
population — 25,000 — not less than 22,000 children remain 
unprovided for. 

The Provincial Councils are called upon by the Third 
Plenary Council for special legislation where negroes more 
abound regarding better and more efficacious measures by 
which the salvation and Christian education of these people 
maybe promoted. "We decree," continue the Fathers, 
"that Bishops shall by every possible means provide for the 
erection of churches, schools, orphanages and asylums for 
the use of negroes." ^ 

The common Pastoral Letter adds to this: 

" . . . Of our colored population there is a very large 
multitude, who stand sorely in need of Christian instruction 
and missionary labor ; and it is evident that in the poor 
dioceses in which they are mostly found, it is most difficult 
to bestow on them the care they need, without the generous 
co-operation of our Catholic people in more prosperous 
localities. ' ' 

CATHOLIC INDIANS IN UNITED STATES. 

Turning to the much less numerous but more helpless and 
shiftless children of the soil, the most careful search in the 
"Sixteenth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis- 
sioners," 1884, fails to reward one with even the most 
shadowy conception as to what the Catholic Church is 

1 Acta et Decreta Cone. Bait. Plen. III., pp. 133 sqq. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. I45 

doing or has ever done for the poor, but by us, at least, 
well-beloved natives. 

Without seeking to disparage whatever honest and zealous 
works the Denominations have to show among the abor- 
igines, it would seem anything but fair for the Indian Com- 
missioners to blazon and trumpet forth the doings and 
sayings of even conscientious ministers of Christian societies, 
from the Rio Grande to Lake Itasca, and shove into a 
corner an obscure reference to a batch of seven little Catho- 
lic Indian agencies, and the possible mention of a Catholic 
in the List of Agents. It cannot be otherwise than palpable 
that the sectarian policy, inaugurated by the unfortunate 
administration of our great-accounted national soldier, has 
been too successfully followed up j and that our once ex- 
tended Catholic missions, which gave the Red outcast in his 
own land all the elevation he ever acquired, are being, as 
far as possible, obliterated. May be, however, Catholics 
are to blame for indifference to this sad state of things. 
One indubitable fact to be accounted for is, that an exact 
examination of five or six Reports of Indian Commissioners 
from 1870 shows the presence of but one Catholic repre- 
sentative, on a single occasion, at any of the numerous con- 
ferences held in the interests of the native tribes ; though, at 
least in two, such representative was called for. Perhaps, it 
may be pleaded, the Denominational ministers and predomi- 
nance seemed too overwhelming for successful resistance. 

The following laboriously collected and collated statistics, 
drawn from public and private official sources, prove Ten- 
nyson's lines not too severely applied : 

"... And still from time to time the agents 
Swarm' d over lands and harried what was left. 
And so there grow great tracts of wilderness 
Wherein the White is ever more and more — 
The Red man less and less. ..." 

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CHAPTER XXX. 

REGULATIONS "OF THIRD PLENARY COUNCIL ON SCHOOLS OF 

SUPERIOR EDUCATION HIGH SCHOOLS COLLEGES — 

ACADEMIES MIXED BOARDING SCHOOLS. 

'^ Since the number of Catholic youths, talented and well- 
to-do, is day by day increasing, they naturally aspire to a 
superior course of education after they have gone through 
the Parochial schools . . . God grant our fondly-cherished 
hope of seeing matters so arranged that these desires may be 
fully accomplished by facilitating the advancement of Catho- 
lic children by regular ascent from the Elementary to the 
Superior Catholic Schools ! Alas ! it too frequently hap- 
pens that boys who have passed, pure and pious, from the 
bosom of Christian families and the precincts of a Catholic 
school, into the shadow of non-Catholic colleges, return 
inflated indeed with knowledge but sadly lacking faith and 
Christian morals. 

' ' We admonish and beseech the faithful in the Lord by 
their united efforts to hasten the happy consummation when 
Academies, Colleges and Catholic Universities shall have 
become so numerous and well-equipped that all and every 
one of our Catholic youth may find in their own schools 
whatsoever they or their parents propose they should learn. 

' ' To bring this to pass let parents send the children who 
desire to perfect their education to the existing Catholic 
schools of superior instruction, when once they shall have 
completed their parochial education. But if, perchance, 
there be no Cathojic schools for the special course designed 
for their children and they be forced for this reason to allow 

147 



148 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

them to frequent non-Catholic institutions, we admonish 
them most earnestly to remove, as far as possible, every 
danger to faith and morals, mindful of the words of the 
Lord : ' What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul.' (Matt. xvi. 26.) 

"Those of our people blessed with abundance of worldly 
goods, we beg by the bowels of God's mercy, and beseech 
them for the honor of the Catholic name to open their 
treasures for the foundation and endowment of Catholic 
Colleges. There can be no nobler use of riches than to 
open the avenues of higher education to poorer children, 
who give solid evidences, by genius, good dispositions and 
morals, of future piety, utility and excellence. . . . 

"SUPERIORS AND PROFESSORS 

of our Colleges we exhort to be ever mindful of their mo- 
mentous and sacred office. ... Watch over the morals of 
your youthful charges. ... Instruct them in Christian 
Doctrine throughout their whole course, not incidentally 
and cursorily, but in the best possible manner. Put all your 
strength and ambition into training your pupils to be on a 
par with those of the finest non-Catholic schools in arts and 
sciences, and incomparably superior in the purity and up- 
rightness of their hearts." 

DIRECTIONS FOR MIXED ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES. 

"As it not seldom happens, on account of our peculiar 
circumstances and the equality of social grades in this coun- 
try, non-Catholic parents commit their sons and daughters 
to our higher schools, Catholics are more or less mixed with 
those not of the faith. Many who are not otherwise favor- 
able to the Church show their confidence in our priests and 
religious, especially religious women, by trusting young 
people to their direction and teaching. Though we do not 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 49 

absolutely prohibit the reception of non-Catholics, we do 
exhort Superiors to watch the more vigilantly over the morals, 
of all their pupils the more Catholics are mixed with others. 
And this is imperative not only in order that Catholics may 
suffer no harm from contact with non-Catholics, but also 
that non-Catholics may not be scandalized by Catholics.^ 
*' Catholic pupils in such mixed schools shall be diligently 
exercised in works of piety and devotion, and be so fully and 
solidly instructed in all divine things that the danger of 
indifference, if any should arise from such close intercourse 
with non-Catholics, may be entirely averted. The rules of 
the school shall strictly forbid discussions on religious mat- 
ters between the scholars in the absence of their teachers 
and without their express knowledge. It is not by strife of 
words and arguments but by prayers and virtuous examples 
of both preceptors, and of scholars, who are in an especial 
manner a blessed offspring, that those who are wandering 
outside shall return to the unity of the fold — our Saviour 
Himself saying : ^ Every good tree shall bring forth good 
fruit.' " (Matt. vii. 17.) 

1 "In the words of the Instruction S. O. of January ist, 1866, cited in the Instr. 
of Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, April 25th, 1868, sent to us, we forbid 
non-Catholic scholars * to be obliged to assist at the Sacrifice of the Mass and other 
Church services ; but it shall be left to their own option ' (Vetamus ne Alumni (ae) 
Acatholici ' obligentur ad assistendum Missae Sacrificio aliisque functionibus Ec- 
clesiasticis, verum ideorum arbitrio relinquatur. ' " Schema Concilii — p. 61.) 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

LEGISLATION OF THE PLENARY COUNCIL ON PREPARATORY 

SEMINiiRIES DECREES ON THEIR GOVERNMENT AND 

COURSE OF STUDIES. 

Whilst priests are encouraged to use their exceptional 
opportunities to discover and cherish vocations which they 
shall find in boys "of good disposition, pious hearts, gen- 
erous and devoted as well as quick minds," and to pay 
special attention to aiding parents of slender means to edu- 
cate their sons for the sacred ministry, pastors are warned 
to set their faces against the imprudent attempts of some 
other parents to foist their sons on the seminaries for the 
sake of pious or human motives, not backed by real voca- 
tions to the priesthood on the part of their growing boys. 
The beautiful Encyclical of the immortal Pius IX., of glor- 
ious memory, teaches the real object of seminaries : ^ 

"Here the tender candidates of the hoHest of warfares, like new 
settings flourishing round about the tabernacle of the Lord, are formed 
to innocence of life, religion, modesty, and the ecclesiastical spirit, at 
the same time that they imbibe polite letters, elementary and more ad- 
vanced studies from the most select masters, following doctrine the most 
undefiled by the taint of error." [Encyc. Nostis., 8th December, 1849.) 

Superiors and professors must contend with a holy zeal to 
teach these "youthful clerics to put off the spirit of the 
world, and put on that of the Church, . . . piously fre- 
quent the sacraments, visit the Most Holip on His altar, 
devoutly cherish the Most Blessed Virgin, attentively assist 

1 Act. et Dec. Tit. V., Ch. I. 
150 



CHRISTIAN vs. GODLESS SCHOOLS. I5I 

at the Holy Sacrifice, meditate with fruit, and read pious 
books. 

'' The laws of urbanity and true politeness must so gov- 
ern their speech, their very walk, postures, and dress — in a 
word, their whole external conduct, that their persons may 
breathe a certain air of moderated culture, equally removed 
from the rudeness of the common-folk and the studied ele- 
gance of the worldly. Their manners should be polished 
and smooth, their works and actions attuned and tempered 
by the sweet charity and humility which form the only 
true basis of Christian urbanity and suavity. Thus exer- 
cised, they will not fail to become, by the attractive beauty 
of their conduct, the more efficient, because the more ac- 
ceptable, ministers of God to men, whom they set their 
lives to gain for Christ. 

"the COURSES OF STUDY, 

in the small or Preparatory seminaries shall occupy at 
least six (6) years. Christian Doctrine comes first in the 
list of studies, and should be graded in each of the courses 
to suit the age and capacity of the learners . . . After 
Christian Doctrine the next place should be accorded to the 
study of Languages. The English Language, above all, 
must be thoroughly mastered in all its parts, as to its cor- 
rect, fluent, and even elegant use, both in speaking and 
in writing. To accomplish this double purpose, the alumni 
shall be drilled in writing, public speaking and recitation. 

'' Besides English, each scholar shall take up at least one 
of the modern tongues, — German, French, Polish, or 
one of the Slav dialects, Italian or Spanish, according as 
the Bishop shall elect for his own diocese. Latin should 
become so familiar by hard study and exercise that it can 
be written and spoken in its purity, and without serious 
fault. Pupils shall be exercised in translating both from 



152 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

Latin into their mother-tongue, and often from the ver- 
nacular into Latin j . . . some choice bits or couplets of 
verse being learned by heart daily. . . . It is to be desired 
that the Roman Catechism (of Trent) — a truly golden book 
in doctrine and perspicuity of style, be put into the hands 
of senior students, to be read and translated. Its luminous 
doctrine and pure latinity will make it work its way into 
the ever-increasing estimation of all who become familiar 
with it. 

" The study of Greek shall be pursued to the extent of 
enabling students to read intelligently the New Testa- 
ment. . . . 

'^ Particular emphasis shall be laid on distinctness and 
correctness of articulation and accentuation. . . . Let 
Rhetoric be taught theoretically and practically. Alumni 
shall labor to acquire a succinct and simple style — full of 
dignity and, indeed, sublimity, without danger of swelling 
into bombast." 

In the following paragraphs the other studies are thus 
classed : Sacred and Profane History, especially of the 
country^ Geography, "the light of history"; all the 
branches of Mathematics ; the Natural Sciences — Natural 
Philosophy, Chemistry, Natural History, Geology, As- 
tronomy — are to be cultivated at least far enough not to 
appear ignorant of them, and to prepare the ground for 
future studies. Gregorian Chant and Music are to be 
practised throughout the whole curriculum. Bookkeeping 
is ordered to be taught in every small seminary. 

Finally, examinations, orally and in writing, are to be 
held at the end of the scholastic year — without which no 
pupil shall be allowed to ascend to a higher grade. Synodal 
Examiners are charged with the duty of examining those 
passing from the Preparatory to the Theological Seminary. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

NEED OF THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY PROVED BY 

THE HISTORY OF THE SIMILAR MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND 
AND IRELAND OPINIONS AND LETTERS OF FIVE PROMI- 
NENT CONVERTS. 

The Third Plenary Council, while not legislating specially 
regarding the proximate establishment of the contemplated 
American Catholic University, has outlined the nucleus of 
such an Institution in its short chapter on " A Principal 
Seminary for the United States." The Fathers seem to 
have agreed that the first desideratum in this direction is 
undoubtedly the broadening and deepening of the educa- 
tion of the clergy. This properly accomplished, the way 
will be clear towards extending the benefits of a real uni- 
versity to those talented young men of the laity, who desire 
to embrace liberal professions, whilst they run no risk of 
their faith or morals. 

Though the words of the conciliar chapter are only 
general and prescribe nothing beyond the nomination of a 
Committee of Bishops to '' define the system of studies, and 
choose professors ?nd other officials," it is known that active 
and actual steps have been taken to secure a foundation and 
endowment fund. ' 'About five hundred and fifty thousand ' ' 
dollars are said to have been subscribed and to be avail- 
able. The site has been bought in Washington, D. C. ; and 
further than this, it can be stated on authority, nothing has 
been decided upon, pending the action of the Board in its 
meeting in May, 1886. 

To form any just idea of the necessity of this '' great 
153 



154 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

centre of knowledge, ' ' on this side of the Atlantic, regard 
must be had to the action of the Episcopate of England 
and Ireland as inspired by the Holy See in its Rescripts of 
1847-8 and following years to the Irish Bishops; of 1867 
and the intervening period to the prelates of England. 
No one can withhold his admiration of the untiring watch- 
fulness, learning and persistency of the Bishops of Ireland 
in their struggle for educational rights of all kinds, espe- 
cially in the past fifty years, and respecting, more particu- 
larly in latter years. Intermediate, Collegiate and University 
Education. Foot by foot they conquered and held in the 
face of popular and governmental opposition the grounds 
occupied by their primary and parochial schools. The next 
stand was made against the State institutions of " Queen's 
Colleges" and their like. The ''nominatim" condemna- 
tion of these " on account of their grievous and intrinsic 
danger to faith and morals ' ' by Pius IX. in special Briefs 
of October, 1847, ^1"^^ 1848, was soon followed up by prac- 
tical measures for the founding of the Catholic University 
in Ireland in 1854, under the presidency of Dr. (now 
Cardinal) John Henry Newman. 

This Father of the Idea of a University in the modern 
English-speaking Catholic world, elaborated his scheme in 
union with the Irish and English Bishops, in word and 
work — in his three monumental volumes on University 
Education, and in the actual successful conduct of the 
university for a number of years. It was he who openly 
challenged the English Protestant world to prove that they 
possessed any adequate idea of a University, when they 
dared to break with the Catholic traditions estabhshing 
Theology, supported by Philosophy, as the ground-work 
and steadying principle of all knowledge, truly so called. 

. . . "When the Church founds a University," he writes, "she is not 
cherishing talent, genius or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the 
sake of her children, with a view to their spiritual welfare, and their 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 55 

religious influence and usefulness, with the object of training them to 
fill their respective posts in life better, and making them more intelli- 
gent, capable, active members of society." ^ Speaking again of the 
modern division of education, "In vi^ord indeed, and in idea," he con- 
tinues, " it is easy enough to divide knoMdedge into human and divine, 
secular and religious, and to lay down that we will address ourselves to 
the one without interfering with the other; but it is impossible in 
fact. . . . You will soon break up into fragments the whole circle of 
secular knowledge, if you begin with the mutilation of the divine." 
This, finally, is the " sort of compromise " the State and its upholders, 
in its pretensions to dictate in the matter of separation of religious and 
secular training, propose and carry out : " . . . Theology should re- 
main . . . excluded from Public Schools, but it should be permitted in 
private, wherever a sufficient number of persons is found to desire it." "^ 

As the State would not, and the Church could not, yield 
one to the other. Catholics have been reduced to the neces- 
sity of maintaining superior schools and universities where 
they could call their souls their own. The controversy has 
waxed into such an irreconcilable conflict that there is a 
unanimous consent among the rulers of the Church, led on 
by the successor of the Fisherman, to force the withdrawal 
of Catholic young men and women from all so-called State 
or privately endowed lay Colleges and Universities in Great 
Britain and Ireland. Even the world-respected Cardinal 
Newman could not obtain permission from the Holy See to 
head a movement looking towards establishing Catholic 
colleges succursal to the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. And at the reorganization of the Catholic University 
of Ireland, after twenty-eight years of existence, the Irish 
prelates in solemn session (October, 1882), re-affirmed their 
refusal to allow the students of Maynooth to graduate in 
the Royal University. 

The compeer of Cardinal Newman, the Cardinal and 
Archbishop of Westminster, has frequently laid bare the 

1 The Nature and Scope of a University Education. Preface, p. xii. 

2 Ibid., pp. 25,53. 



156 THE JUDGES OF FAITH ; 

reasons for this decided action. Passing over his better 
known and earlier utterances of 1872 and the following 
years, we find Cardinal Manning reiterating in 1 883 ^ that 
the "system of secular education has reduced the National 
Universities to schools of secular science and secular litera- 
ture. ' ' Of those Universities he had penned these startling 
words: "Students may pass through (them) without faith 
in Christianity, and therefore without formation of the 
intellect and will by the truths and the spirit of the Chris- 
tian religion." 

But better than, and including, all particular opinions 
and rulings of even the higher dignitaries, are the decisions 
of the Holy See itself on the matter actually in hand. 

The following documents explain themselves : 

Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, ) 
Rome, January 30th, 1885. j 

My Lord Cardinal : I have received your Eminence's letter of the 
20th of last month, and have learnt from it with pain that by some 
families little account is made of the admonitions of the Holy See as 
to sending their sons to the Protestant universities. The letter points 
out that this arises, not so much from a want of good will as from 
their supposing that what they do is tolerated by the Holy See. To 
guard, therefore, the higher education of the Catholic youth of your 
country from this danger of perversion, I request that you make known 
to the faithful that no change whatever has taken place in respect to 
the instructions upon this matter which were sent by my predecessor 
Cardinal Barnabo to the English bishops on August 6th, 1 867, and 
were afterwards inserted in the Provincial Synods of Westminster. 
For this purpose I should think it opportune to suggest to the bishops 
of England to recall the said instructions to the remembrance of their 
flocks. 

Your Eminence's humble and devoted servant, 

John Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect, 
►J^D., Archbishop of Tyre, Secretary. 

His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. 

1 " The Month," Jan., 1883. Cfr. Pastoral of Jan., 1885. 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 5/ 

The Cardinal's translation of the Instruction reads: 

"In the letter of February 3d, 1865, to the Bishops of England, the 
Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith declared that it 
most promptly confirmed the resolution unanimously adopted by the 
above-mentioned Bishops in their recent meeting in London, to the effect 
that Colleges ought not to be established in the English Universities at 
Oxford and Cambridge, and that Catholic parents ought to be by timely 
counsel dissuaded from sending their sons to these Universities. This 
same Sacred Congregation saw that the resolution of the Bishops was 
altogether in harmony with the principles which it has traditionally laid 
down in conformity with the judgment of the Sovereign Pontiff, as often 
as his judgment has been sought concerning the dangers of mixed edu- 
cation. Moreover, inasmuch as by their circular letter of March 24th, 
1865, the Bishops of England made known to the priests in their dioceses 
the above-cited resolution, which had been confirmed by the Sacred 
Congregation, there was reason to hope that Catholic parents would so 
comply with it, as to guard their sons altogether from the dangers of 
perversion. But certain facts which have lately come to pass, have 
sufficiently proved that the declarations on this matter pronounced by 
the Holy See, and the above-mentioned circular letter of the Bishops to 
the priests under them, have not been sufficiently promulgated ; and there- 
fore it appears to be necessary for all and each of the Bishops of England 
to publish a Pastoral letter, in which they will lay down both for the 
clergy (secular and regular) and for the faithful of their dioceses, a clear 
and certain rule upon which to act in a matter which is of the greatest 
gravity, and is intimately connected with the eternal salvation of souls. 

" But as all persons did not hold the same opinion as to the avoiding 
the non-Catholic Universities, and since there were some indeed who 
even thought the practice of Catholic youth frequenting the before- 
mentioned institutions might be tolerated, either for the worldly advan- 
tages which are obtained there, or because in their opinion no certain 
law appeai-ed absolutely to prohibit the frequenting of these institutions, 
I think it of importance that your Grace should clearly explain in your 
Pastoral letter the doctrine on avoiding the proximate occasions of 
mortal sin; to which occasions no one can without grievous sin expose 
himself, except under the pressure of grave and adequate necessity, and 
unless such precautions be taken as shall remove all proximate danger 
of sin. But in the present case, where, as the Sovereign Pontiff has 
declared, there is an .intrinsic and most grave danger, not only for purity 
of morals, but especially for the Faith (which is altogether necessary for 



I 5 8 THE JUDGES OF FAITH : 

salvation) every one must see that it is next to impossible to find cir- 
cumstances in which non-Catholic Universities could without sin be fre- 
quented. The inconstancy of disposition and the instability of young 
men ; the false opinions which are inhaled with the atmosphere in such 
institutions, without the antidote of a sound teaching ; the very great 
influence which human respect and the ridicule of companions bring to 
bear upon young men, render their danger of falling into sin so manifest 
and so proximate, that in general no sufficient reason can be imagined 
to justify Catholic youth being sent to non-Catholic Universities. ..." 

Now as to the applicability of this decision to American 
secular Universities, State Colleges and Normal Schools, 
the affair must be left to the judgment of the Hierarchy. It 
will not, however, be judged as forestalling their decision to 
adduce the opinions of four or five of our most eminent 
convert priests and public writers, who have been good 
enough to remit the following answers to special inquiries. 

One of the foremost literateurs England has had the honor 
of sending to aid the cause of higher intellectual culture and 
religion in these States introduces the subject,-by giving his 
'^own experience of the English Universities" : 

"I was at Oxford in 1862 and 1863; and at Cambridge 
in 1865 and 1866. The Rituahstic influence was slight at 
that time compared to what, from all accounts, it is now : 
yet it made itself felt — particularly at Oxford. On the other 
hand, the religious influence was wholly inadequate as a 
preservative for morality. The undergraduate was left, that 
is, with regard to faith and morals, a great deal too much to 
himself. An Anglican High-Churchman would fijid his set 
there ; so would a Low-Churchman ; so would a Broad- 
Churchman : but a Catholic would be quite out of his ele- 
ment — ^unless he became an Indifferentist or an open 
unbeliever. So that the Catholic Bishops in England had 
abundant reason for prohibiting Catholics from entering 
either University — to say nothing of the religious teaching 
and the daily Chapel, which all had to attend." 



J 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 59 

Coming to our side of the Atlantic, a correspondent from 
Buenos Ayres, South America, writes for the Rev. Father 
FideHs, known as J. Kent Stone, former President of Hobart 
and Kenyon Colleges, and author of Invitation Heeded " : 

" With regard to Harvard (where he was) — and the same 
remarks, no doubt, apply to Yale — there is nothing in the 
curriculum, he says, to interfere with a Catholic's faith; 
neither is there any obligation of attending chapel or relig- 
ious instruction : but the atmosphere of the University de- 
cidedly tends to destroy all faith whatever. . . . Since you 
ask his opinion about ' Public High and Normal schools, ' 
he says it is ' decidedly unfavorable ' : that he ' does not 
believe in any State institution as a proper school for 
Catholics.'"^ 

With permission to make whatever use we please of what 
he has written, Very Rev. Augustin F. Hewit, of the Catho- 
lic World, in responding to a letter addressed to himself 
and the Very Rev. editor, I. T. Hecker, writes : 

''House of the Paulist Fathers, 
'' New York, April 14th, 1885. 

'' Rev. and Dear Sir : — Although I was acquainted with 
the colleges already existing in my youth as they then were, 
I have no intimate knowledge of those more recently founded, 
and the older ones have undergone very great changes. They 
differ so much among each other that it is impossible to 
make general statements, and much less those which are 
particular and detailed, which will apply to all alike. 

' ' I will only say, that as a general rule, and in the case 
of those who are very young, and not well-instructed, firm 
in character and principles, and otherwise surrounded with 
safeguards of their faith and morals, there are dangers in 
the non-Catholic colleges, to which prudent parents ought 
not to expose their sons. 

1 Letter, May 19th, 1885. 



l60 THE JUDGES OF FAITH I 

''The uncatholic, and in part, in some colleges, infidel 
influences from teachers and fellow-students, are one dan- 
ger. There is, moreover, a certain amount of dissipation 
among the students which is morally dangerous to the young 
and inexperienced. 

" Then, the lack of sound and thorough instruction in 
philosophy is a disadvantage. As a general rule, it is my 
opinion that it is unsafe to place Catholic youth in these 
colleges for their undergraduate course ; and I do not think 
that in respect to the course of studies, the majority of our 
young students would find any great advantage in following 
it, over and above what they can obtain in a good Catholic 
college. . . . 

"Yours very truly, 

''AuGUSTiN F. Hewit." 

We may conclude with this succinct statement from no 
less ' an authority than Rt. Rev. Monsignor Thomas S. 
Preston, Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of His late Emi- 
nence, Cardinal McCloskey, and confirmed in the same 
dignity by his Grace, Most Rev. Michael Corrigan, 
Archbishop of New York. 

''no East Twelfth St., 

"New York, April 13th, 1885. 
"Rev. Dear Father: — ... In regard to the frequen- 
tation of non-Catholic colleges by Catholic young men, 
my views, founded on experience and personal knowledge, 
are very decided. I think it should never be permitted in 
any case. I know it is fraught with dangers to faith, and 
even sometimes to morals. Neither is there any just excuse 
for it, as we have Catholic colleges of equal standing, and 
in some respects superior to Protestant Colleges. The Holy 
See has, through Cardinal Simeoni, expressed its disappro- 
bation of it, in a letter to the Bishops of England. ... It 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. l6l 

covers the whole ground. I do not see how Cathohc 
parents can be excused from grievous sin who expose their 
children to the risk of the loss of faith. And in non-Catholic 
education, under the best circumstances, there is always this 
risk. 

"Yours faithfully in Christ, 

"T. S. Preston." 

These representative testimonies are clearly indorsed by 
the few but telling words of the united Episcopate in its 
often-quoted late Pastoral: "... We cannot close our 
eyes to the fact that teachers of skepticism and irreligion 
are at work in our country. They have crept into the 
leading educational institutions of our non-Catholic fellow- 
citizens ..." among which are, beyond doubt, included 
the higher colleges and universities, not specifically sec- 
tarian, viz. ; those of the States. 

"But," continue the assembled prelates, " when we take 
into account the daily signs of growing unbelief and see 
how its heralds not only seek to mould the youthful mind 
in colleges and seats of learning, but also by actively 
working amongst the masses, we cannot but shudder at the 
dangers that threaten us in the future." 
II 



CHAPTER XXXIIL 

POPE LEO XIII. GLORIOUSLY REIGNING. 

The name of our already truly glorious Leo has become 
the synonym for all it means — indomitable courage, the 
keenest intellect, untiring energy. It is but to be pro- 
nounced and its ring holds the world in expectancy of good 
words for the faithful and strong words for their opponents. 
If ever the fast vanishing Christian States wished for the 
help of the unconquered hand of Peter to save them from 
the inflowing floods of infidelity, socialism, mis-education, it 
is outstretched to them now. We have space for but few 
extracts from His Holiness' letter to his Vicar-General of 
Rome, Cardinal Monaco La Valetta, dated June 26, 1878: 

"... Those who, owing to the duties of their positions, should be 
expected to watch over the true interests of the people of Rome, have 
issued a decree banishing the Catholic Catechism from the municipal 
schools. . . . 

" But the welfare and prosperity of nations have no secure protection 
outside of truth and justice, which the society of the present day so 
much requires, and in which the Catholic Catechism preserves their 
rights in their integrity. For the love, then, of the precious fruits that 
have already been derived and that may be justly expected from this 
instruction, not only should it not be banished from the Public Schools, 
but eveiy effort should be made to promote it, 

" He, who, in the education of youth, neglects the will and concen- 
trates all his energies on the culture of the intellect, succeeds in turning 
education into a dangerous weapon in the hands of the wicked. 

"... Is it not cruel to ask that these children grow up without an 
idea or feeling of religion, until, having reached the ardency of youth, 
they come in contact with flattering and violent passions, with no arms 
162 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 63 

to overcome them with, with no restraint, and with the certainty of 
being aUured into the slippery road to crime ! It gives great sorrow to 
our paternal heart to contemplate the lamentable consequences of this 
insensate resolution, and our sorrow is all the more intense when we 
consider that temptations to all sorts of vice are far stronger and more 
numerous now than ever before." 

The letter closes with the command to the Cardinal Vicar 
that pastors be exhorted to urge parents to the strict fulfill- 
ment of their duty to children, " and that they be reminded 
of the duty that is incumbent upon all, to require religious 
instruction in schools for their children." 

What the princely Holy Father sacrifices — all that is given 
him outside his absolute needs — on charity and the educa- 
tion of the poor, especially in Italy and the Eternal City, 
is known by reading mankind.^ Amid many similar in- 
structions he has deigned the Hierarchy of France the 
following Encyclical Letter, Feb. 8, 1884, quoted by the 
Baltimore Plenary Council : 

"It is of the utmost importance that the offspring of 
Christian marriage should be thoroughly taught the precepts 
of religion, and that those arts by which the young are 
formed for human society be inculcated in conjunction with 
religious doctrine. To disjoin them would be tantamount 
to desiring that youthful hearts should become indifferent to 
their duties to God — a mode of action false in principle and 
especially pernicious when applied to children of tender age, 
opening as it does the road to atheism and obstructing that 

1 Under the rubric "The Grand Heart of the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII., the 
Divin Salvatore gives the following, pronounced by His Holiness, in presence of the 
editor of the journal aforementioned, on Friday, October 13th, 1882 : 

" Under my predecessor," said Leo XHL, " 100,000 francs yearly were expended 
for the schools. To-day that sum has been quadrupled. All told, we spend at 
present half a million, and I give it willingly. The damage done to education is by 
far too great ; we must seek out a remedy. I will share my last sous with the schools. 
Last year, I was told — Oh how much good could be accomplished with 50,000 francs 
more ! — Count upon rhat increased sum, was my answer. I will tax the Peter Pence 
in 30,000 francs, and I will furnish the residue from my private purse." 



164 THE JUDGES OF FAITH: 

to religion. It behooves good parents by all means to make 
sure that their children, as soon as they begin to manifest 
the first sparks of reason, be taught religious precepts, and 
that in their schools nothing impair the soundness of faith 
and morals. As both natural and divine law dictate dili- 
gence in the raising of children, parents cannot for any 
reason be released from this obligation. The Church . . . 
being bound to watch sedulously the teaching and training 
of youth placed under her care, has always openly con- 
demned schools called mixed or unsectarian (neutras), and 
admonished heads of families again and yet again . . . 
carefully to avoid them. . . . 

''Those whose youth has not been trained to religion, 
will grow up without any knowledge of those most import- 
ant things, which alone are calculated to nourish in man 
the desire of virtue, and curb the appetites opposed to 
reason. . . . Finally, without this knowledge, all future 
cultivation will be diseased ; youth, unaccustomed to rever- 
ence God, cannot possibly brook any restraint of honorable 
living, and, never having dared to deny their own desires, 
are easily drawn into schemes against the order of society. ' ' 

Not yet content with these plain, strong instructions to 
the Italian and French clergy and people, the wise and 
benevolent Pontiff has turned his gaze directly upon the 
English-speaking Catholic world, and opening his infallible 
mouth deigned to teach even the minutiae of the duties 
of all, in his short, comprehensive Letter to Cardinal Man- 
ning and the English Bishops. The America-loving Prince 
has mailed to our Catholic papers in the United States a 
certified translation of a copy of the document in full, as 
follows : 

" Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction : 
" Your proved fidelity and singular devotion to this Apostolic See are 
admirably shown in the letter which we have lately received from you. 
Our pleasure in receiving it is indeed increased by the further knowl- 



CHRISTIAN VS. GODLESS SCHOOLS. 1 65 

edge which it gives us of your great vigilance and anxiety, in a matter 
where no care can be too great : we mean the Christian education of 
your childi'en, upon which you have lately taken counsel together, and 
have reported to us the decisions to which you came. 

" In this work of so great moment, venerable brethren, we rejoice 
much to see that you do not work alone ; for we know how much is 
due to the whole body of your clergy. With the greatest charity, and 
with unconquered efforts, they have provided schools for their children ; 
and, with wonderful diligence and assiduity, they endeavor by their 
teaching to form them to a Christian life, and to instruct them in the 
elements of knowledge. Wherefore, with all the encouragement and 
praise that our voice can give, we bid your clergy to go on in their 
meritorious work, and to be assured of our special commendation and 
good will, looking forward to a far greater reward from our Lord God, 
for whose sake they are laboring. 

" Not less worthy of commendation is the generosity of Catholics in 
this matter. We know how readily they supply what is needed for the 
maintenance of schools ; not only those who are wealthy, but those also 
who are of slender means and poor ; and it is beautiful to see how, 
often from the earnings of their poverty, they willingly contribute to the 
education of children. 

" In these days, and in the present condition of the world, when the 
tender age of childhood is threatened on every side by so many and 
such various dangers, hardly anything can be imagined more fitting than 
the union with literary instruction of sound teaching in faith and morals. 
For this reason, we have more than once said that we strongly approve 
of the Voluntary schools, which, by the work and liberality of private 
individuals, have been established in France, in Belgium, in America, 
and in the colonies of the British Empire. We desire their increase, 
as much as possible, and that they may flourish in the number of their 
scholars. We ourselves also, seeing the condition of things in this city, 
continue, with the greatest effort and at great cost, to provide an abun- 
dance of such schools for the children of Rome. For it is in, and by, 
these schools that the Catholic faith, our greatest and best inheritance, is 
preserved whole and entire. In these schools the liberty of parents is 
respected ; and, what is most needed, especially in the prevailing license 
of opinion and of action, it is by these schools that good citizens are 
brought up for the State ; for there is no better citizen than the man who 
has believed and practised the Christian faith from his childhood. The 
beginning and, as it were, the seed of that human perfection, which 
Jesus Christ gave to mankind, are to be found in the Christian education 



1 66 THE JUDGES OF FAITH. 

of the young ; for the future condition of the State depends upon the 
early training of its children. The wisdom of our forefathers, and the 
very foundations of the State, are ruined by the destructive error of those 
who would have children brought up without religious education. You 
see, therefore, venerable brethren, with what earnest forethought parents 
must beware of intrusting their children to schools in which they cannot 
receive religious teaching. 

" In your country of Great Britain we know that, besides yourselves, 
very many of your nation are not a little anxious about religious educa- 
tion. They do not in all things agree with us ; nevertheless, they see 
how important, for the sake of both society and of men individually, is 
the preservation of that Christian wisdom which your forefathers received, 
through St. Augustine, from our predecessor, Gregory the Great : which 
wisdom the violent tempests that came afterwards have not entirely 
scattered. There are, as we know, at this day, many of an excellent 
disposition of mind, who are diligently striving to retain what they can 
of ancient faith, and who bring forth many and great fruits of charity. 
As often as we think of this, so often are we deeply moved : for we 
love with a paternal charity that island which was deservedly called the. 
Mother of Saints ; and we see, in the disposition of mind of which we 
have spoken, the greatest hope and, as it were, a pledge of the welfare 
and prosperity of the British people. 

" Go on, therefore, venerable brethren, in making the young your 
chief care ; press onward and in every way your episcopal work ; and 
cultivate with alacrity and hopefulness whatever good seeds you find : 
for God, Who is rich in mercy, will give the increase. 

" As a pledge of gifts from above, and in witness of our good will, 
we lovingly grant in the Lord to you, and to the clergy and people 
committed to each of you, the Apostolic Benediction. 

" Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 27th day of November, in the 
year 1885, the eighth year of our Pontificate. 

"Pope Leo XIII." 



APPENDIX. 



No. I. 

Three condemned Propositions of the Syllabus on Education in 
Common Schools. 

Prop. XLV. Totum scholarimt publicarum regimen, in quibus juven- 
tus Christiana alicujus Reipublicae instituitur, . . . potest ac debet 
attribui auctoritati civili, et ita quidem attribui, ut nullum alii cuicumque 
auctoritati recognoscatur jus immiscendi se in disciplina scholarum, in 
regimine studiorum, in graduum collatione, in delectu aut approbatione 
magistrorum. 

Alloc. In Consistoriali. Nov. i, 1850. 

Alloc. Qtiibus luctuossimis. Sept. 5, 1 85 1. 

Prop. XLVII. Postulat optima civilis societatis ratio, ut populares 
scholae, quae patent omnibus cuj usque a populo classis pueris, zz public a 
universim Insiihita, quae litteris severioribusque disciplinis tradendis et 
educationi juventutis curandae sunt destinata, eximantur ab omni 
Ecclesiae auctoritate, moderatrice vi et ingerentia, plenoque civilis ac 
politicae auctoritatis arbitrio subjiciantur ad imperantium placita et ad 
communem aetatis opionionem adamussim. 

Epist. ad Archisp. Friburg. Quum non sine. Julii 14a 1864. 

Prop. XLVIII. Catholicis viris probari potest ea juventutis insti- 
iuendae ratio, quae sit a Catholica fide et ab Ecclesiae potestate sejuncta, 
quaeque rerum dumtaxat naturalium scientiam ac terrenae socialis vitae 
fines tantummodo vel saltem primario spectet. Ubi Supra. 

. . . Itaque omnes et singulas pravas opiniones ac doctrinas singillatim 
hisce Litteris commemoratas auctoritate Nostra Apostolica reprobamus, 
proscribimus ac damnamus, easque ab omnibus Catholicae Ecclesiae 
filiis, veluti reprobatas, proscriptas atque damnatas omnino haberi volu- 
mus et mandamus. 

Epistola Encyclica : Quanta Cura. 8 Dec. 1864. 

167 



1 68 APPENDIX. 

No. II. 

PIUS THE ninth's EPISTLE TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF FRIBURG (BRISGAU). 

[The following is an exact and careful tianslation of the Apostolip 
Letter of our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., to the Archbishop of Friburg, 
in Brisgau (now in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany). It is dated 
July 14th, 1864. The importance of this Apostolic Letter is shown in 
the fact that from it no less than seven of the eighty propositions of the 
Syllabus were drawn.] 

" To our Venerable Brother HermanUy Archbishop of Friburg, in 
Brisgau : 

PIUS pp. IX. 

" Venerable Brother, Health, and Apostolic Blessing : 

" Ever since, to our exceeding great sorrow of mind, we have learned, 
from many sources, that regulations were being made in the Grand Duchy 
of Baden for a new management of Public Schools, in various ways bring- 
ing with them great danger to the Christian instruction and education 
of youth, in that they day by day remove them farther from the whole- 
some control of the Catholic Church, we have not doubted but you, 
Venerable Brother, according to your admirable regard for the care of 
souls, and your notable firmness in guarding the liberty of the Church, 
and its rights, would stanchly resist all such endeavors as might, ever so 
little, cause ruin of souls, or in any manner restrain the free authority 
of your ministry. 

" This we already knew ; but your letter, written to us on this most 
important matter, and your notes upon it, confirm our confidence in you. 
And we rejoice exceedingly, Venerable Brother, at seeing that you, 
though weighed down with years [Archbishop Hermann Von Vicarij, 
at the date of this letter, was ninety-one years old !], are fighting bravely 
for the Church, with that indomitable courage which you have shown 
in the whole course of your Episcopate, and has won for you, from us, 
and from this Holy See, most deserved praises. Thus it is, that while 
we suffer most bitter afflictions, we find great consolation in knowing 
how God, Who is rich in mercy, strengthens the Prelates of sacred 
offices, with a larger help of His Divine grace for the protection of the 
flock of Jesus Christ, in proportion as wicked men attack and invade the 
fold. 

" No one, certainly, can doubt that the exceedingly mournful and 



APPENDIX. 169 

lamentable condition into which society, in these times, is falHng more 
and more, comes from the many most ruinous devices which aim at sepa- 
rating from public instructions, and from private families, the faith, the 
worship, and the saving doctrine of Christ — that this most wholesome 
power may be restrained and hindered. And these most hurtful con- 
nivances have, of necessity, their origin in depraved doctrines, which 
we are deeply afflicted at seeing lift up their heads, and grow into 
accepted customs more and more, everywhere, to the exceeding hurt of 
the Church and of Civil Society, in this our most miserable age. And, 
surely, when truths revealed by God can be shamelessly denied, or re- 
legated to the judgment of human reason, the subjection of the natural 
to the supernatural order, which is every way fitting, is clearly destroyed ; 
and men are shut out from seeking their eternal destiny, and reduced to 
busying themselves solely about the fleeting affairs of this quickly passing 
world. 

" The Church was constituted by its Divine Author the Pillar and 
Foundation of the truth, that she might teach all men Divine Faith, 
might keep the deposit of that Faith, given to her, perfect ; and that she 
might mold and direct men, and their customs, and their dealings, to a 
purity of morals, and an uprightness of life, after the pattern of revealed 
doctrine. But the fosterers and propagandists of bad teachings exert 
all their power to rob the Ecclesiastical power of its authority over 
human society. Wherefore they leave nothing unattempted, nothing 
untried, that they may hamper, or exclude altogether from these educa- 
tional institutions, the entire power of the Church, and its health-giving 
force, which the Church herself, of her Divine authority, has ever exer- 
cised, and ought to exercise, in these institutions of human society. But 
these very institutions they would subject to the will of the political author- 
ity, and to the rule of the evanescent notions of the age. 

" No wonder the wretched efforts of this kind, in the instruction and 
education of the young, appear palpably. Nor is there any doubt that 
^ human society is to be visited and tormented with most grievous penal- 
ties, when from the public and the private instruction of youth the 
controlling authority of the Church, and its wholesome restraints, are 
gone — so intimately affecting the happiness both of sacred and secular 
society. 

*' For it is thus, by such specious craftiness, that human society is, little 
by little, bereft of that true Christian spirit which, alone, can aid men in 
settling the peace and good order of public life ; give effect to, and 
control, any true and valuable progress of civilization, and afford to men 
all those helps necessary for them to attain their end, after the con- 



I^O APPENDIX. 

summation of their mortal existence. And, assuredly, the method of 
instruction proposing to deal with the knowledge merely of natural 
things, and the ends of this life of society on earth, by this very fact 
withdraws from truths revealed by God, and must, of necessity, glide 
into a spirit of error and of hes. And the education that, without the 
help of Christian Doctrine, and of the Catholic discipline of morals, 
would train the tender minds of youth, and their hearts, which, without 
these supernatural aids are like melted wax, ready to be stamped with 
vice, cannot fail to bring forth a progeny that will be moved only by 
depraved appetites, and selfish motives, to the overwhelming in disgi-ace 
both of private families, and of the republic. 

" But if this most ruinous method of teaching, disjoined from Catholic 
faith, and from the control of the Church, is of extreme injury to men, 
and to society, when the question regards advanced studies, and 
such lessons as may be of advantage to be given, in public institu- 
tions, to children of the more favored classes of society ; who does not 
see that much worse evils and hurts arise from this system, if it is used 
in common schools. For it is in these schools, most of all, that all the 
children of whatever class of society are to be taught, from their ten- 
derest years, the mysteries of our most holy rehgion, and by initial 
instructions are to be carefully fostered and trained, precisely, to piety, 
proper customs and practices, and how to conduct themselves in 
society. 

" Now, in these schools, the doctrines of religion ought to have the 
primary place, in a manner so especial, in instruction and education, and 
so pervade these, that knowledge gained of other things, — a taste for 
which may be given to youth, — ought to be considered as merely 
accidents. 

" Therefore youth are exposed to the greatest dangers, unless their 
instruction, in schools referred to, is coupled, by the closest tie, with 
religious teaching. As common schools have been instituted mainly for 
the religious education of the people, to cherish Christian piety and 
morality, they have, therefore, always deservedly and with perfect right 
claimed the whole care, solicitude, and watchfulness of the Church, 
above all other educational institutions. And, therefore, the designs 
and endeavors of excluding the Church's authority from the common 
schools proceed from a most hostile disposition to the Church, and from 
the desire of extinguishing the Divine light of holy faith in the nations. 
Wherefore the Church, which first founded those schools, has always 
bestowed the greatest care and zeal upon them, and considered them as 
the most important department of her authority and jurisdiction ; and 



APPENDIX. 171 

any separation of them from the Church cannot but be productive of the 
greatest loss to the Church and to the schools themselves. All those 
who would have the Church resign, or withdraw her salutary direction 
of the popular schools, demand nothing less than that the Church should 
act against the behests of her Divine Founder, and neglect the most 
important charge committed to her of procuring the salvation of men. 

" Assuredly, in whatever places or countries these most dangerous 
schemes of excluding the authority of the Church from the schools 
should be attempted or put . into execution, and the youth should be 
lamentably exposed to the danger of suffering loss in their faith, the 
Church is not only bound to use all her zeal and efforts and spare no 
pains at any time, that the young should receive the necessary religious 
education, but is also bound to admonish all the faithful, and declare to 
them that such schools, being hostile to the Catholic Church, cannot in 
conscience be frequented." 



No. III. 

INSTRUCTIO DE SCHOLIS PUBLICIS AD RMOS EPISCOPOS IN FOEDERATIS 
STATIBUS AMERICAE SEPTENTRIONALIS. 

Pluries S. Congregatio de Propaganda Fide certior facta est in Foede- 
ratis Statibus Americae Septentrionalis Catholicae juventuti e scholis 
publicis, quas illic vocant, gravissima damna imminere. Tristis quocirca 
hie nuntius effecit, ut praedicta S. Congregatio amplissimis istius ditionis 
episcopis nonnullas quaestiones proponendas censuerit, quae partim ad 
causas cur fideles sinant liberos suos scholas acatholicas frequentare, par- 
tim ad media quibus facilius juvenes e scholis hujusmodi arceri possint, 
spectabant. Porro responsiones a laudatis episcopis exaratae ad Supremam 
Congregationem Universalis Inquisitionis pro natura argumenti delatae 
sunt, et negotio diligenter explorato Feria IV., die 30 Junii, 1875, per 
Instructionem sequentem absolvendum ab Emis. Patribus judicatum est, 
quam exinde SS, Dnus. Noster Feria IV., die 24 Novembris praedicti 
anni adprobare, ac confirmare dignatus est. 

Pon-o in deliberationem cadere imprimis debebat ipsa juventutis institu- 
endae ratio scholis hujusmodi propria atque peculiaris. Ea vero S. Con- 
gregation! visa est etiam ex se perculi plena, ac perquam adversa rei 



1/2 APPENDIX. 

catholicae. Alumni enim talium scholarum cum propria earumdem ratio 
omnem excludat doctrinam religionis, neque rudimenta fidei addiscent, 
neque Ecclesiae instruentur praeceptis, atque adeo carebunt cognitione 
homini quam maxime necessaria, sine qua Christiane non vivitur. En- 
imvero in ejusmodi scholis juvenes educantur jam inde a prima pueritia, 
ac propemodum a teneris unguiculis : qua aetate, ut constat, virtutis ac 
vitii semina tenaciter haerent. Aetas igitur tarn flexibilis si absque re- 
ligione adolescat, sane ingens malum est. Porro autem in praedictis 
scholis, utpote sejunctis ab Ecclesiae auctoriate, indiscriminatim ex omni 
secta magistri adhibentur, et ceteroquin ne perniciem afferant juventuti 
nulla lege cautum est, ita ut liberum sit errores et vitiorum semina ten- 
eris mentibus infundere. Certa item corruptela insuper ex hoc impen- 
det, quod in iisdem scholis aut saltem pluribus earum, utriusque sexus 
adolescentes, et audiendis lectionibus in idem conclave congregantur, et 
sedere in eodem scamno masculi juxta feminas jubentur : quae omnia 
efficiunt ut juventus misere exponatur damno circa fidem, ac mores peri- 
clitentur. Hoc autem periculum perversionis nisi e proximo remotum 
fiat, tales scholae tuta conscientia frequentari nequeunt. Id vel ipsa cla- 
mat lex naturalis et divina. Id porro Claris verbis Summus Pontifex ed- 
ixit, Friburgensi quondam Archiepiscopo die 14 Julii, 1864, ita scribens r 
Certe qziide7n ubi in qiiibtiscuviqtie locis regionibiisque perniciosisshnum 
hujusmodi vel susciperetur, vel ad exitum perduceretur consiliiini expell- 
endi a scholis Ecclesiae atictoritatem, et juventus misere exponeretur 
damno circa fidem, tunc Ecclesia non solum deberet instantissimo studio 
omnia conari, nullisque curis parcere, ut eadem juventus necessariam 
Christianam institutioneni, et educationem habeat, verum etiam cogere- 
tur onines fideles 7none7'e, eisque declarare ejtismodi scholas Ecclesiae 
Catholicae adversas haud posse in conscientia frequentaj'i. Et haec qui- 
dem utpote fundata jure naturali ac divino, generale quoddam enunciant 
principium, vimque universalem habent, et ad eas omnes pertinent regi- 
ones, ubi perniciosissima hujusmodi juventutis instituendae ratio infelici- 
ter invectd fuerit. Oportet igitur ut Sacrorum ' Antistites, quacumque 
possint ope atque opera, commissum sibi gregem arceant ab omni con- 
tagione scholarum publicarum. Est autem ad hoc, omnium consensu, 
nil tam necessarium, quam ut Catholici ubique locorum proprias sibi 
scholas habeant, easque publicis scholis haud inferiores. Scholis ergo 
Catholicis, sive condendis, ubi defuerint, sive amplificandis, et perfectius 
instniendis parandisque, ut institutione ac disciplina scholas publicas 
adaequent, omni cura prospiciendum est. Ac tam sancto quidem exequ- 
endo consilio, tamque netessario haud inutiliter adhibebuntur, si Epis,copis 
visum fuerit, e Congregationibus religiosis sodales sive viri sive mulieres ; 



APPENDIX. 173 

sumptusque tanto operi necesarii ut eo libentius atque abundantius sup- 
peditentur a fidelibus, opportune oblata occasione, sive concionibus, sive 
privatis colloquiis serio necesse est ut ipsi commonefiant, sese officio suo 
graviter defecturos, nisi omni qua possunt cura, impensaque scholis 
Catholicis provideant. De quo potissimum monendi erunt quotquot in- 
ter Catholicos ceteris praestant divitiis ac auctoritate apud populum, qui- 
que comitiis ferendis legibus sunt adscripti. Et vero in istis regionibus 
nulla obstat lex civilis quominus Catholici, ut ipsis visum fuerit, propriis 
scholis prolem suam ad omnem scientiam ac pietatem erudiant. Est 
ergo in potestate positum ipsius popul'i Catholici ut feliciter avertatur 
clades, quam scholarum illic publicarum institutum rei Catholicae mina- 
tur. Religio autem ac pietas ne a scholis vestris expellantur, id omnes 
tandem persuadeant sibi plurimum interesse, non singulorum tantum 
civium ac familiarum, verum etiam ipsius florentissimae Americanae 
nationis, quae tantam de se spem Ecclesiae dedit. 

Caeterum S. Congregatio non ignorat talium interdum rerum esse ad- 
juncta, ut parentes Catholici prolem suam scholis publicis committere in 
conscientia possint. Id autem non poterunt, nisi ad sic agendum suffi- 
cientem causam habeant ; ac talis causa sufficiens in casu aliquo partic- 
ulari utrim adsit necne, id conscientiae ac judicio Ordinariorum relin- 
quendem erit; tunc ea plerumque aderit, quando vel nulla praesto 
est schola Catholica, vel quae suppetit parum est idonea erudiendis 
convenienter conditioni suae, congruenterque adolescentibus. 

Tunc autem ut scholae publicae in conscientia adiri possint, periculum 
perversionis cum propria ipsarum ratione plus minusve nunquam non 
conjunctum, opportunis remediis cautionibusque, fieri debet ex proximo 
remotum. Est ergo imprimis videndum, utrumne in schola, de qua ade- 
unda quaeritur, perversionis periculum sit ejusmodi, quod fieri remotum 
plane nequeat : velut quoties ibi aut docentur quaedam, aut aguntur, 
Catholicae doctrinae bonisve moribus contraria, quaeque citra animae 
detrimentum, neque audiri possunt, nedum peragi. Enimvero tale peri- 
culum, ut per se patet, omnino vitandum est quacumque damno etiam 
vitae. 

Debet porro juventus ut committi scholis publicis in conscientia pos- 
sit, necessariam Christianam institutionem et educationem saltem extra 
scholae tempus rite ac diligenter accipere. Quare parochi et missionarii 
memores eorum, quae providentissime hac de re Concilium Baltimorense 
constituit, catechesibus diligenter dent operam, iisque explicandis prae- 
cipue incumbant veritatibus fidei ac morum, quae magis ab incredulis et 
heterodoxis impetuntur ; totque periculis expositam juventutem impensa 
cura, qua firequenti sacramentorum usu, qua pietate in Beatam Virginem 



1^4 APPENDIX. 

studeant communire, et ad religionem firmiter tenendam etiam atque 
etiam excitare. Ipsi vero parentes, qviive eorum loco sunt, liberis suis 
sollicite invigilent, ac vel ipsi per se, vel, si minus idonei ipsi sint, per 
alios, de lectionibus auditis eos interrogent, libros iisdem traditos recog- 
noscant, et si quid noxium ibi deprehenderint, antidota praebeant, eosque 
a familiaritate et consortio condiscipulorum, a quibus fidei vel morum 
periculum imminere possit, seu quorum corrupti mores fuerint, omnino 
arceant atque prohibeant. 

Hanc autem necessarian! Christianam institutionem et educationem 
liberis suis impertire quotquot parentes negligunt : aut qui frequentare 
illos sinunt tales scholas, in quibus animaruni ruina evitari non potest : 
aut tandem qui, licet schola Catholica in eodem loco idonea sit, apteque 
instructa et parata, seu quamvis facultatem habeant in alia regione pro- 
lem Catholice educandi, nihilominus committunt eam scholis publicis, 
sine sufficiente causa ac sine necessariis cautionibus, quibus periculum 
perversionis e proximo reniotum fiat : eos, si contumaces fuerint, absolvi 
non posse in sacramento poenitentiae ex doctrina morali Catholica mani- 
festum est. 



EDUCATIONAL SUMMARY. 



175 



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CONTENTS. 



- Page 

Prefatory Notes, vi 

Acknowledgments, . vii 

Chapter I. — Introductoiy Disclaimer — Mystic Relations of Secret 
Societies and Public State Schools, on the Continent and in 
the English-speaking World, i 

Chapter II. — Defining of Terms and Object in View — Division 

of the Subject — American Schools — Their Working, .... 8 

Chapter III. — Influence of Fellow-pupils, . i6 

Chapter IV. — Books of Primary and Grammar Schools — Books 
used in Higher Grades — Hume — Hallam — Willson's "Out- 
lines of History" — Scott's "Marmion" — Peter Parley — 
Swinton — Anderson — Cleveland — Draper, 20 

Chapter V. — What Schools cannot in conscience be frequented — 

Under what conditions others sometimes may, 26 

Chapter VI. — Secular or State Schools condemned by the Bishops 

of Christendom — Because Godless, . 31 

Chapter VII. — What the Bishops of the United States in council 

say, 34 

Chapter VIII. — British Possessions — Columbia — Canada — "The 

Underworld" — Little Island of Ceylon • • • 3^ 

Chapter IX. — Mexico — Teachers, 44 

Chapter X, — The Episcopate of Erin — The Battle of Sixty 

Years not yet Decided — Its Present Array, 47 

Chapter XL — English Board vs. Voluntary Schools — English 

Hierarchy and Cardinal Manning, 53 

Chapter XII. — Les Ecoles Professionelles — La Ligue d'Educa- 
176 



CONTENTS. 177 

Page 
tion — Schools under the Empire — The Infidel National Sys- 
tem under the Republic of France, 58 

Chapter XIII. — Continuation of Testimony of Bishops, Pastors 
of Nations — Prussia — Austria — Prince Bismarck — Prince and 
Cardinal Schwarzenberg, 64 

Chapter XIV. — Conclusion of Testimony of Bishops, Pastors of 

Nations — The Netherlands — Catholic Belgium, 68 

Chapter XV. — Pius IX. — The Right of the Church to the Spir- 
itual Control of Christian Education, 73 

Chapter XVI. — Pius IX. on the Working of the Godless System 

in General — High Schools in Particular, 76 

Chapter XVII. — Pius IX. — Education in the Schools of the 
Masses of the People — Elementary Schools — Schema CXV. 
of the Vatican Council, 79 

Chapter XVIII. — Bishops in the United States — Archbishops 
Purcell and Elder — Bishops Gilmour and Rosecrans — The 
Bishops in Kentucky, Drs. McCloskey and Toebbe, .... 82 

Chapter Xl^. — Province of Cincinnati, Concluded — Rt. Rev. 

Bishops in Indiana, 89 

Chapter XX. — Archbishop Perche, of New Orleans — Bishops of 
Natchitoches, La. ; Natchez, Miss. ; Mobile, Ala. ; Galveston, 
Tex.; Little Rock, Ark.; Rt. Rev. F. Janssens, 94 

Chapter XXI. — Proviiice of San Francisco — Most Rev. S. Ale- 
many, late Archbishop of the Golden State — Suffragans of 
Monterey, and of Grass Valley — Archbishops Heiss and 
Henni — Bp. Vertin, of Marquette, of the province of Mil- 
waukee, 98 

Chapter XXII. — Provinces of St. Louis, Chicago, Santa Fe, . . 102 

Chapter XXIII. — The Provinces of Philadelphia and Oregon 

City, 107 

Chapter XXIV. — Archdiocese of Boston and the New England 

States, Ill 

Chapter XXV. — His Eminence, John Card. McCloskey, late 
Archbishop of New York — Former Suffragan Bishops of Bos- 
ton, Burlington, Hartford, Portland, Providence, Springfield, 



1 78 CONTENTS. 

Page 

Philadelphia, Scranton, Harrisburg, Erie, Pittsburg, Newark 

— Present Rt. Rev. Suffragans of New York — Provincial 
Council of New York, Sept., 1883, 116 

Chapter XXVI. — Proprimatial See of Baltimore — ^James Car- 
dinal Gibbons — Predecessors, Most Revs. J, R. Bayley, 
M. J. Spalding, and F. P. Kenrick — Dr. J. J. Keane, of Rich- 
mond, Va., 121 

Chapter XXVII. — The Sacred Congregation's Instruction to the 
Rt. Rev. Bishops of the United States of North America on 
the Public Schools, November 24th, 1875, 128 

Chapter XXVIII.— The Teaching of the III. Plenary Council 
of Baltimore on the New System of Primary and Parochial 
Schools — Ways and Means — The Regulations Inspired and 
Revised by the Holy See, 134 

Chapter XXIX. — Catholic Primary and Industrial Schools for 
Indians and Negroes — The Most Complete Statistics of Catho- 
lic Indian Education, 142 

Chapter XXX. — Regulations of III. Plenary Council on Schools 
of Superior Education — High Schools — Colleges — Acade- 
mies — Mixed Boarding Schools, 147 

Chapter XXXI. — Legislation of the Plenary Council on Prepar- 
atory Seminaries — Decrees on their government and Course 
of Studies, 150 

Chapter XXXII. — Need of the American Catholic University — 
Proved by the History of the Similar Movement in England 
and Ireland — Opinions and Letters of Five Prominent Con- 
verts, 153 

Chapter XXXIII.— Pope Leo XIII. Gloriously Reigning, . . 162 

Appendix. — No. I. Three Propositions of the Syllabus, .... 167 

No. II. Pius IX. to Archbishop of Friburg, 168 

No. HI. Insti'uctio de Scholis Publicis, 171 

Educational Summary of United States and Canada, 175 



PRESS COMMENTS. 



Catholic Review — BROOKLYN, N. Y. 

A very useful little Manual. We shall be greatly surprised if such 
teaching does not stimulate others to aspire to what the Church desires 
as the ideally perfect Christian school. 

Northwestern Chronicle — St. Paul. 
In it the voice of the Church on Christian Education is made to speak. 

San Francisco Monitor. 
A book worth its weight in gold. We appeal to pastors and parents 
to give it the widest possible circulation. 

Rev. Dr. Mahar — Cleveland Universe. 

We are tempted to lose sight of what is after all the most cogent of all 
arguments to the Catholic, the judgment of those who have been divinely 
made " Bishops to rule the Church of God." A truly Catholic publi- 
cation. 

Ave Maria. 

It is the best work on the subject. 

Sunday Democrat. 
The little volume will command a large sale. > 

Western Watchman. 
The very best summary of the kind ever issued. 

Western Home Journal. 
An able and seasonable pamphlet. 

Rev. Rich. Clarke, S. J. — The Month. 

We are sure that nobody who peruses this little work can have any 
doubt but that the Episcopate of the Catholic Church is unanimous in 
condemning the-Godless system of education, nor will anybody begrudge 
the thirty cents which he pays for the pleasure it will afford him. 

N. Y. Freeman s Journal. 

The work is simple, clear, straightforward, written for the people, with 
no unnecessary words. ... It is addressed to the people, not to their 
pastors. It appeals to the authority of the Teaching Church. 



PRESS COMMENTS. 

Cardinal Newman. * 
The volume on Secular Schools is interesting to read and is as season- 
able here and important as it can be in America. 

Very truly yours, 

John H. Card. Newman. 

•iinpcc nc cAiTH . / Paper, Net 30 cts.; $24 per 100 ; 
JUDGES OF FAITH :- |cioth. 60 cts. Net ; $24 per 50. 



By the same Author.— " SIX SEASONS and SIX 
"WEEKS: a DIARY." 

Opinions of Editors and Dignitaries., 

Rev. R. F. Clarke — London Month. 
Father Jenkins' little book will be welcome to a large class of readers — 
to tourist and settler, farmer and sportsman, colonizers and teachers in 
schools. He is keenly appreciative of the beauties of nature. 

Philadelphia Standard. 
A more readable, chatty, interesting and edifying book, nor one con- 
taining more definite information on the matters touched upon, we have 
seldom met with. 

Catholic Mirror. 

A pleasant batch of sketches about Ufe in the West, combined with 
practical moral teaching. 

r 

Eliza Allen Starr in Ave Maria. 

Our author is a poet — a poet by nature. In all our readings concern- 
ing Europe, Asia and Africa, we have yet to see anything more suggestive 
to the imagination than these descriptions of Nature among our own 
Rockies. 

Catholic World Magazine. 

A simple, unaffected narrative. It is certainly more refreshing read- 
ing than many of the more pretentious guide-books. 

Bishop Janssens of Natchez. 
I find it exceedingly interesting — variety of style that is pleasing. 

40 cts., paper; 65 cts., cloth. Holiday style, 80 cts. 

Send orders to CHAS. A. ROGERS, Louisville, Ky., 
or any bookseller. 







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